Anti-Social Media in Global First
This article was written by one of our Young Reporters, a scheme that gives 14 to 18-year-old school students a chance to write for a real newspaper. Find out more at the Young Reporter website.
From the 15th December 2025, in a world first, people under the age of 16 in Australia will be unable to create or access an account on major social media platforms, due to fears of damaged well-being and possible access to extremist ideas to young people.
In November 2024, the Australian government announced that there would be a ban on all social media for young people under 16; including many large, global companies, such as YouTube, TikTok or Meta, the parent company of Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads. This caused major backlash from them, claiming that it would affect users of their platform, and be extremely easy to get around, so not worthwhile for the huge costs and inconvenience to customers.
In particular, YouTube are considering a legal action to stop this ban from passing. However, many experts and activists say that the benefits of this ban will be immense for the protection of children and young people from harmful content online.
Earlier this year, a government study showed that 46% of Australian children aged 8 to 17 were exposed inappropriate content and over 58% of those surveyed said that they had been in conktact with strangers on social media.
These figures were unacceptable to the Australian government; something had to change, resulting in this huge change to policy.
Many platforms have been strictly told that they must abide by these measures and are encouraged to use checks such as facial or vocal age analysis, if the account holder interacts with content aimed at children under 16 or patterns of activity similar that of a school schedule.
However, this raises many concerns that many people may be incorrectly identified as under 16, such as teachers whose schedules match that of a student, or may be interested in the lives of students. The Australian Government has attempted to combat this by making it easy to report a mistaken labelling over someone as under 16, when not.
Many argue that tech-savvy teens will find a way to navigate around this law, possibly using a VPN suggesting they are outside Australia, or using parents’ accounts to avoid the original checks. However, bans like this for other restrictions elsewhere have seen a rapid drop in usage, and this is not reflected in increases in other countries, where VPNs could be tied to, suggesting that most people are put off by the limit.
While of course the government would like to enforce this policy well, they are not looking to punish under 16s for having a social media account and instead are looking to fine companies up to $50 billion if they do not take ‘reasonable steps' to enforce the new rule. Although, they do not specify specific requirements, possibly leading to confusion in enforcement of this law.
Despite all of this backlash from both large companies and many teenagers themselves, the government is still going ahead with the agreed changes, showing that they prioritise children’s wellbeing over and above profits, or what teens perhaps see as a right and not necessarily a luxury.
This raises concerns for many teens in the UK that the government will follow suit, as our statistics of under 16 social media usage is similar to that of Australia, with around 75% of 13-17 year-olds experiencing at least one potential harms online. There is no released information yet. However, the government may implement similar rules once Australia has given a positive verdict.
Sources: BBC News, House of Commons Library, Australian Government.
