Quite a decisive move by the Australian government. I don't know if it's a move in the right direction or not but the research clearly shows that around the time social media became mainstream, teens' and preteens' mental health took a nosedive (Especially girls).
Hugely decisive! Feels more like a policy for idyllic hypotheticals. "Suppose we could ban social media..." well, hey, they actually did it.
I'm very interested to see how their socializing evolves in response to such a shock. Do the social behaviors of pre-internet times re-emerge? "Third spaces" reappear overnight? We shall see!
The success so far is really just political, which has largely been shutting down debate and dismissing calls for some kind of cost analysis of what we risk losing in enforcing this.
Whenever someone brings up this stuff, the politicians take the tone that "we won't let anyone get in the way of protecting children", and this is in response to people who in good faith think this can be done better. Media oligopolist love it because it regulates big tech, so they've been happy to platform supporters of the policy as well.
Third spaces won't reappear because the planning system in most cities shuts anything down the moment someone files a compliant. They get regulated out of existence the moment police express concern young people might gather there. The planning system (which in NSW/Sydney is the worse) has only gotten worse since the 80s after the green bans. It was largely put in place to allow for community say in how cities are shape, which sounds nice but it's mostly old people with free time participating who don't value 3rd spaces, even if they might end up liking them. They just want to keep things the same and avoid parking from getting overly complicated (and this is a stone throw away from train stations and the CBD).
Third places can be fixed by reforming planning which is slowly gaining momentum via YIMBY movements, but this social media ban is just not a serious contribution to changing that. If anything Social media phenomenon like Pokemon GO contributed more to these third places lighting up.
Governance in Australia is very paternalistic, it's a more high functioning version of the UK in that sense. I think it might be in part due to the voting system being a winner takes all single seat electorate preferential voting system which has a median voter bias for least controversial candidates.
As a kid I always felt being in Australia you missed out on a lot of things people got to do in America, that has slowly changed as media and technology has become less bound by borders but looks like that being undone.
Given that “social media” is in fact not banned and all this does is impact a select (and frankly logically inconsistent) list of services, this seems very unlikely. Children are still free to be groomed and gamble on Roblox and join servers belonging to The Com on Discord. To be clear I don’t think those services should be regulated by this obscene law either but this isn’t going to bring back any kind of halcyon era for kids. It will expand the surveillance of and shame around young people’s internet use, however.
How so? It has been implemented so that age verification is a token only, a yes/no authorisation. The age verification service doesnt get browsing details, and the site providing content doesnt get any additional user details beyond what they would likely already have, including those subject to PII legislation.
> It has been implemented so that age verification is a token only, a yes/no authorisation.
This is misinformation. The legislation does not specify a single particular implementation for age-based verification and there's absolutely no single "age verification service" that platforms are legislated to use. Instead they're required to verify users' ages based on several recommended methods, including age inference. https://digitalrightswatch.org.au/2025/12/03/what-you-need-t...
Further, the Communications Minister herself regarding whether she's concerned about people bypassing authentication-based age verification checks: "If you’re an adult - you probably won’t need to do anything extra to prove your age, because like I said before, these platforms have plenty of data to infer your age." https://minister.infrastructure.gov.au/wells/speech/address-...
As an Australian experiencing this first hand and considerably older than 16, absolutely nothing has changed. It seems like all the social networks are doing age estimation of accounts and only taking action on those that fail and are detected as underage. The change is otherwise completely invisible if you're an adult user. Obviously I'm only a sample size of 1, but I've not heard of any other adults being adversely affected by this, so it seems the estimation is accurate.
Pretty well executed - I'm impressed. Given how seamlessly this occurred, it will undoubtedly be rolled out in Europe next year, as the EU has expressed an interest in doing so, but was waiting to see how the implementation went in Australia.
Nothing has changed for my 15 year old either. It’s business as usual today for her.
She says only one of her friends has been challenged by a platform so far, and that was by Snapchat. That friend got another 14 year old friend to pass the facial age detection check on her behalf.
It seems like a handful of sites havent even switched over. Most are just estimating. Theres no clear indication that the execution has been anything but botched, unless convenience for older people was the only metric.
The government have previously stated they won’t pursue breaches unless they’re particularly egregious anyway so this is basically shameless political theatre.
I really hope other nations, including the United States, copy this. Australia proved that it is possible. I think the results will be so overwhelmingly positive that others will take notice. Good job Australia!
Reading "Anxious Generation" is a must for all parents in this day and age.
Isn't it a little early to declare success? I think the bigger worry with the US though is not whether it is technically possible, but whether anyone in power cares to actually help kids versus using this it as an excuse to implement Orwellian surveillance upon citizens.
Surveillance could be part of it, if you let it be. Improved mental health, education, and social outcomes for each generation is also pretty darned important.
Of course it is possible, why would it not? I'm glad this is happening and I'm sure it'll follow in other countries, probably not the in the US though. Frankly I really hope most people just get off social media's grip and start interacting the way we used to.
Its crazy how the AusGov has just tried to turn this into some kind of nationalistic celebration. Passing laws isolating children isnt to be celebrated by lighting up national monuments.
reply