this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2026
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347
Australia’s teen social media ban is a flop. But there’s no joy in ‘I told you so’ (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 2 days ago by Itwasntme223@discuss.online to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] sunbeam60@feddit.uk 1 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

Just because we agree with the news doesn’t make it correct.

The ban was brought about in December 2025. It’s clearly far too early to draw any conclusions about the impact.

If we are going to cherry pick data let’s make sure to cherry-pick data from both sides: https://yougov.com/articles/54334-new-yougov-research-shows-cautious-optimism-as-australians-assess-impact-of-under-16-social-media-ban

[–] BranBucket@lemmy.world 26 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What if, instead of trying and failing to kick kids off social media, we focused our attention on the reasons why being online is so often detrimental in the first place?

Pre-fucking-cisely.

[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Then you'd have a massive "but what about the children?!" censorship situation for everyone.

[–] BranBucket@lemmy.world 8 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

We already have that, and it has solved absolutely nothing while potentially making online surveillance and privacy issues worse.

The answer isn't age-gating or ID verification, it's changing how the sites themselves operate. Get rid of the idea of "driving engagement", no more stealth ads, and no corpo, media, political party, or lobbyist accounts. Hold influencers and podcasters to the same kind of standards we used to hold journalists to, where they're required to tell you when the're shilling for some kind of shady supplement company or political huckster.

You know, the kind of shit any sane species would do with this sort of tech, but when have we ever been sane?

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago (4 children)

A 30% reduction of kids being exposed to these harmful platforms is a good thing and I'm glad to see it.

Also, all laws are imperfect, and expecting 100% efficacy is moronic.

[–] bless@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 hours ago

Don't you know? Nothing is worth doing unless it solves all problems at once right away

[–] Ohh@lemmy.ml 2 points 13 hours ago

As a parent who dont like id requirements but who also wants my children away from social media, this is my take:

Social tech does not require a tech solution, but instead a social solution, because social media is a social problem. My children has restricted access, no accounts etc. But that helps little when all the other parents believe social media to be fine. A law clearly sets a social norm, which apparently 30 % of parents understand.

[–] fodor@lemmy.zip 6 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Right, but the politicians didn't sell the law at 30% efficiency. They sold it at something like 95% efficiency. So they lied and they haven't solved anything.

Maybe they could have used all of that money to run campaigns to help convince parents to properly supervise their children. Maybe that would have done more than this 30% figure.

[–] FlyingCircus@lemmy.world 6 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Or maybe, instead of creating privacy-infringing laws or blaming parents, we actually dismantle the tech companies who created them and imprison their leaders. We all know corporate social media is cancer, that’s why we’re on Lemmy. So let’s fucking do something about the cancer instead targeting the victims or worse, exploiting the situation to expand the surveillance state.

[–] Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 4 points 15 hours ago

You don't think they'd happily target Lemmy if it were larger? It's still "social media" to them

[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Seriously. Murders still happen so lets legalize murder.

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[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 17 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The fallback argument for the social media ban is that it’s better than nothing. But with results like these, it may be worse than nothing, given it potentially creates new problems. Children will remain online with arguably less supervision and support, new privacy and digital security vulnerabilities seem to have appeared and the worst aspects of social media lay largely unaddressed.

I wish more people understood this. Changing something can mean you've caused harm unintentionally, even if you haven't identified it yet. Too many people seem to have the thought process "We have to do something! This is something. Let's do this." without ever considering the harm they might do.

[–] Jimbel@lemmy.world 26 points 1 day ago (4 children)

The addictive design of platforms, software and algorithms should be adressed, not the users age.

And the tech companies should be made responsible to design more healthy platforms, etc.

The problem is the design of tech, not the people using it.

[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Why is everyone forgetting the parents in this shit. They are the ones giving their kids access to this shit, not monitoring and moderating their access to this shit, and letting screens do the job of raising their kids instead of doing it themselves.

[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The same parents who scream anytime a teacher grades them fairly?

[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 2 points 23 hours ago

Teachers should be legally allowed to posses a metal gauntlet for backhanding idiot parents across the face.

[–] sleepyplacebo@rblind.com 0 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

Yeah someone has to be paying for the phones and internet access, both mobile internet and or home internet or if they don't have a phone yet, the tablet , desktop or laptop with internet access. It's usually the parents paying for this stuff.

There are parental controls built into the Android builds of all the various mainstream manufacturers. The main exception might be for example small companies selling phones with custom Android OS distributions or people who install their own where parental controls are not built in, but that isn't what the vast vast majority of people are using let alone installing on their child's phone.

There are parental control options built into IOS too. They allow parents to setup a variety of controls.

https://families.google/familylink/

https://support.apple.com/en-us/105121

The following article from the Electronic Frontier Foundation cites various research about how a majority of social media use even by people under 13 is often done with parents knowledge and even direct help.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/01/congress-wants-hand-your-parenting-big-tech

Most Social Media Use By Younger Kids Is Family-Mediated

If lawmakers picture under-13 social media use as a bunch of kids lying about their age and sneaking onto apps behind their parents’ backs, they’ve got it wrong. Serious studies that have looked at this all find the opposite: most under-13 use is out in the open, with parents’ knowledge, and often with their direct help.

A large national study published last year in Academic Pediatrics found that 63.8% of under-13s have a social media account, but only 5.4% of them said they were keeping one secret from their parents. That means roughly 90% of kids under 13 who are on social media aren’t hiding it at all. Their parents know. (For kids aged thirteen and over, the “secret account” number is almost as low, at 6.9%.)

Earlier research in the U.S. found the same pattern. In a well-known study of Facebook use by 10-to-14-year-olds, researchers found that about 70% of parents said they actually helped create their child’s account, and between 82% and 95% knew the account existed. Again, this wasn’t kids sneaking around. It was families making a decision together.

A 2022 study by the UK’s media regulator Ofcom points in the same direction, finding that up to two-thirds of social media users below the age of thirteen had direct help from a parent or guardian getting onto the platform.

The typical under-13 social media user is not a sneaky kid. It’s a family making a decision together.

[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

The typical under-13 social media user is not a sneaky kid. It’s a family making a decision together.

Yep.. Theres an idiot in my family that gave their grandkids unrestricted, flagship phones, with full social media account access, at 7 years old.

And no, they are not too old to understand technology. They perfectly understand technology, the internet, and everything else. They are just stupid.

Its on the grandparents for doing it. its on the parents for not taking the fuckin phones away. and its also on social media companies for being algorithmic predators.

[–] Zink@programming.dev 1 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

You are correct, but that does not absolve the companies or the government of any responsibility. It should not be "anything goes" as far as intentionally addictive designs on anything with a screen for the same reason they can't just put cocaine in Doritos. They still engineer in what they can, but with some guardrails. And even in that case the regulations here in the US leave a lot to be desired.

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[–] whoisearth@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago

It's interesting because I was talking to my psychologist about this last week.

Mental illness runs in my extended family specifically my best friend is a functional alcoholic. He grew up the son of a functional alcoholic.

We all agree that alcoholism is an addiction, just like gambling, social media, etc.

The problem is that as a society we are addressing the specific addiction. AA for alcoholics. For gambling the government has programs you can admit yourself to.

What I was postulating to my psychologist is the real problem is some people have un underlying susceptibility to addiction. My experience with addicted people is regardless of good or bad if you remove an addiction they will replace with an unhealthy obsession on something else. Alcohol will be replaced with something else because the problem is the person has an imbalance they can't do something in moderation. I've seen this time and time again.

Plus factor in comorbidities like ADHD and you have a stew going.

My point being, yes you're correct tech is a problem, but it's 100% the people too in some cases it's just without the social media their addiction may have been benign so not visible. "Oh look at Mary with her beanie baby collection." Or "oh look at Jack he really is a go getter running his 10k rain or shine every day."

[–] coolmojo@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

But without the addictive design the users don't spend enough time to see all the ads and tracking required to reach the target growth. Somebody think of the shareholders /s

[–] wabafee@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Clearly the next step is to require ID in the OS /s

[–] blind3rdeye@aussie.zone 13 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I've talked to heaps of parents and heaps of kids about this. What I think is interesting is that people face-to-face seems to be generally supportive of the law. They say that social media is problematic, and that the law helps by discouraging its use. A few different kids have said that they it helps them break an addition. Other kids say they don't care, because it hasn't blocked them. So mostly positive or neutral responses when face-to-face.

But every time I see this mentioned on the internet, it's very negative. There are always heaps of comments saying that it is a failure, and could never work, and that the government is stupid; and there are often other comments saying it is a part of a secret plan for the government to track us or whatever. In any case, mostly negative views - with just a sprinkling of fairly neutral views such as "it hasn't been active for very long. Lets wait and see."

I just think that's interesting. I guess my real-world social circles don't totally match my internet social circles.

[–] JackFrostNCola@aussie.zone 2 points 9 hours ago

A blind spot i know i have is that i grew up without social media and the internet as it exists now, when i was a teen the internet was a place to spend some time playing goofy games on newgrounds or neopets, maybe downloading some movies or music from Limewire or Kazaaar.
I have no idea how i would have gone growing up with this insidiously tailored and hyper addictive environment, honestly it feels like giving every kid their first hit of heroin in high school and sending them on their way.

So i get why kids might be both 'thank you' and 'fuck you' in equal measure, but just like heroin there will be plenty that never recover, and it all could just be resolved by reigning in the social media companies.

[–] emmy67@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

Kids will often just repeat what they've heard to adults.

But the largest problems to these laws is the way they affected minority groups. If followed, the law would disproportionately affect disabled and queer teens who may suddenly be unable to access help and community.

I suspect there's some selection bias in the kids you're speaking to.

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[–] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Censorship is never the answer. Teaching values and the corresponding ethics and morals that come with it is closer to the answer. A world where you burn down shit just to get a job as a firefighter makes this path a bit more difficult and harder to follow.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

Censorship is never the answer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Formally banning certain forms of vulgar and bigoted expression establish a code of conduct for the community, even if they aren't strictly enforced.

Teaching values and the corresponding ethics and morals that come with it is closer to the answer.

Morality is as much about proactive and affirmative pursuit of justice as internalized codes of conduct.

If there is no social consequence for immoral behavior, there is no reason to believe the act is immoral.

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[–] deathbird@mander.xyz 31 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Key point: "Ultimately, the fundamental problem with age-gating is that it fails to address any of the root problems with our current online landscape – that is, the extractive business models and pernicious design features of mainstream tech companies. We all exist in a highly commercialised information ecosystem, rife with algorithmically amplified misinformation, scams, harmful content and AI slop. Children are particularly vulnerable to these issues but the reality is that it impacts everyone, even if you’re blissfully absent from Facebook or Instagram."

[–] ThomasWilliams@lemmy.world 1 points 20 hours ago

It wasn't designed to address online problems, it's purpose was to placate the mainstream media.

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[–] Baggie@lemmy.zip 18 points 1 day ago

This and the porn thing have been massively invasive in terms of privacy. It's so transparently just building a database of facial data. It doesn't even make an attempt to comprehensively block everything on the internet, or realistically enforce compliance.

[–] fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 109 points 2 days ago (74 children)

It was never designed to protect children

Glad to see it's not even working. Let's keep fighting aginst these evil laws

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