alt Hacker NewsAustralia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
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Father of five here, and founder of a social media marketing company (exited). Our kids are up against problems we didn't have during the great expansion of social. The three big things:
1. State level actors and well funded not for profits are fighting an information war to influence our kids. And they are very good at it. Down to having troll farms to talk one on one. Every time something new happens in the world, my younger kids ask me about what they saw on Tik-Tok and their initial understanding is shaped by a well funded actor, and is often completely a false narrative. The solution is be open and talk about it with your kids.
2. Criminals are even better at social than state level actors. They are smooth. And they are on platforms you wouldn't expect - like games. And criminals aren't all about fraud. They sell drugs, they try to physically steal in real life from your kids,they'll try to get your kids to do something embarrasing and blackmail them with it, and even can be human traffickers. Again, the solution is be open and talk about it with your kids - and make sure they know it's ok to ask, and it's especially ok if you think I shouldn't share this with Dad or they person is saying not to show your parents.
3. Sexual predators are even better at social than the criminals. The difference is that the predators can't hide behind national borders so they are very careful. Same solution as $#2, but this one is really tough because when your kids come to you about it, they may have shared something with the predator that the predator is using to extort them into hooking up. Don't attack or blame your kid, focus on making sure the predator never gets to them
I do not believe for a minute that social media was good for my kids as they grew up, but I'm not sure that you can even begin to fix it the way AU is trying to - regulating speech, association using prohibition is dipping a colander in the river to filter the silt.
I feel like everyone in this thread is assuming this is a good faith move by Australia to help kids in school and with socialization.
I think phones and social media are harmful, but I get the sense there's a political motive behind this. We've been hearing politicians complain for years that they're losing the youth when it comes to long-standing foreign policy positions, etc... And suddenly they ban social media. Rahm Emanuel is campaigning for the same thing in America.
I don't believe they're overly concerned with "helping the kids" unfortunately
I fully support this legislation, and government regulation around this topic. Given the current (2025) state of the social media landscape, I believe that the positives of restricting access to them for teenagers well outweighs any potential harms.
As the parent of a teenager affected by this ban (plus one who has aged past it): I wish that it had been in place 8-10 years ago, before either of my kids got smartphones. We tried to be reasonably conservative in their introduction to devices and social media, on the rationale that it would do them no harm to delay using those for a couple of years through their early brain development. The real difficulty turned out to be the network effect of their peers having access to social media, which increased the social pressure (and corresponding social exclusion) to be online. Not having access to Snapchat/Discord/etc. at that point meant that they were effectively out-group, which is a Big Deal for a teenager.
We ended up allowing them onto social media platforms earlier than we'd have liked but imposed other controls (time and space restrictions, an expectation of parental audits, etc.) These controls were imperfect, and the usual issues occurred. My assessment is that it was a net negative for the mental health of one child and neutral for the other.
I realise that HN is primarily a US forum and skews small-government and free-speech-absolutist. I'm not interested in getting in a debate with anyone about this - my view is that most social media is a net negative with a disproportionate harm to the mental health of non-fully-developed teenage brains. This represents a powerful collective-action failure that is unrealistic to expect individuals to manage, so it's up to government to step in. All boundaries are arbitrary, so the age of 16 (plus this set of apps) seems like a reasonable set of restrictions to me. I am unmoved by the various "slippery slope" arguments I've read here: all rules are mutable, and if we see a problem/overreach later - we'll deal with it in the same way, by consensus and change.
A lot of the arguments I see in this thread are about whether modern mainstream social media are bad for young people. When the debate becomes about that, it's very easy to defend these types of Orwellian laws. It becomes "This is a problem, therefore the solution is good", without questioning the solution itself. I think this type of thinking is demonstrated, or perhaps exploited, very well by this article (I'm not implying the WEF is secretly behind everything, I'm just using this as an example):
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/01/davos-2025-special-a...
The first part of that article is an absolutely scathing, on-point criticism of mainstream social media. I find myself agreeing with everything said, and then, suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, the article pivots to "therefore we need completely 24/7 mass surveillance of everyone at all times and we need to eradicate freedom of speech". That article is like a perfect microcosm of this entire international shift in internet privacy.
People and their governments seem to agree that modern social media is a problem. The difference is why. The people think it's a problem because it harms people; governments think it's a problem because they don't control it.
I think that the root cause of this shift to mass surveillance is that people in democratic countries still have a 20th-century concept of what authoritarianism looks like. Mass surveillance is like a novel disease that democracies don't yet have any immunity to; that's why you see all these "it's just like buying alcohol" style false equivalences, because an alarming number of people genuinely don't understand the difference between normal surveillance and mass surveillance.
A lot of debate here is debating a social media ban. But what actually being banned is accounts, not access.
Australian teens can still scroll TikTok, Instagram, and watch Twitch streams from logged out accounts. They just can't comment, like, or upload their own content.
One might argue that this removes the algorithmic feeds. But I would wager that social media companies will just use browser fingerprinting to continue to serve algorithmic content to logged out users, if they aren't doing this already.
My take. This ruling seems to impact the content creators (from Australia specifically) more than the content viewers. Which I'm not sure is the intent of the legislation.
Why ban social media when ad-supported media is the culprit? Remove the incentive (to get users to doom scroll, to polarize, to impulse buy…) and you change the behavior.
I remember when social media was sane 15+ years ago. The problem is the business model, not socializing. It's crazy to ban it when being a teen is the beginning of socializing!
Florida passed a similar law, and a bunch of other states are attempting to but are blocked by federal courts. Will be interesting to see if the tech industry allows it, or decides to break up the federal government before it becomes too powerful.
It’s worth calling this by its other name: the taking away of anonymity and pseudonymity.
To date, proving you are old enough is almost always (over-)implemented by having to reveal your legal identity and the exact date you were born.
If the whole world goes down the route of AV / age-bans then I hope we at least get some kind of escrow service where you visit an official office, prove your age to a disinterested public official, and then pick a random proof-of-age token out of a big bucket. The bucket’s randomness is itself generated when it was filled up with tokens at the Department of Tokens, and maintained by a chain of custody.
You could do it on polling day: ballot boxes get sent out to polling stations filled with tokens and get sent back filled with ballot papers, with the whole process watched by election monitors. Now everyone has (a) voted (b) picked up a proof of age/citizenship token. It would improve turnout, though I believe that’s already mandatory in Australia.
The next step is to outlaw social media in general, and maybe the world will become a bit better.
Edit: in case someone decides to disagree with me, here is a non-exhaustive list of issues that social media has created: isolation from the real world, unrealistic expectations in terms of looks/status/success, dehumanization by turning people into likes-dislikes, dehumanizations by creating influencers whose sole purpose it to pump cheap crap to their "followers", a vessel for state actors to spread the current flavor of propaganda/racism supported by "the algorithm" that creates echo chambers rather than promoting diversity of opinions, dopamine producing machines that glue us to the screens.
There is nothing social in social media, in-fact, it should be called the "anti-social media".
A paragraph from an email Reddit sent me presumably because I created my account in Australia:
> Users confirmed to be under 16 will have their accounts suspended under the new Australian minimum age law. While we disagree with the Government's assessment of Reddit as being within the scope of the law, we need to take steps to comply. This means anyone in Australia with a Reddit account confirmed to be under 16 will be blocked from accessing their account or creating a new one. Note that as an open platform, Reddit is still available to browse without an account.
“Confirmed to be under 16” sounds like they’re not trying very hard to identify them. But maybe I’m just spared any attempt at checking since my account is 12 years old.
I wonder if allowing browsing without an account is compliant with the letter or the spirit of the law—an account is not required for at least some forms of damage. But I’ve paid no attention to this law since I live in India now.
And the UK is pushing for age checks on VPNs
https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/63901/documents/746...
>regulations which prohibit the provision to UK children of a Relevant VPN Service (the “child VPN prohibition”).
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.
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).
To ostracise means literally to be outed from society.
Most people I know want to keep their kids off social media, but do not want them to be ostracised.
Given that law, it might now be possible to keep your kids off the networks.
In my experience, at least for younger teens, it’s a small subset of kids enabled by their parents that push everybody else into the mouth of the kraken.
Example from my life:
Kid A has an Instagram account curated by her mum, who is more than happy to set up all kinds of communities, etc., for the kids in the class to cite: “finally be able to better communicate and stay in touch”.
Sure, you can keep your kid out, but social isolation is not easy for teens. Given that law, you could get Insta-mom banned.
To be honest, I wouldn't mind they'd ban it for adults too, would help me from wasting time on them.
In all seriousness though, I'm curious what counts as social media, can they not play MMORPGs anymore for example? Are niche forums included ? What about chat apps like Whatsapp? Phone texting? Email?
I'm also curious if say TikTok and YouTubed simply deactivated their social features? No comments, DMs, and so on for example? Would they be allowed again?
Kids being banned from social media is just one side of the coin. _Everyone_ else being forced to KYC with random websites is the other. I can’t help but wonder, which of the two outcomes is the actual goal here.
I enjoy participating in wildly diverse online communities and I hate censorship.
I have seen the way heavy social media use changes some peoples personalities. it's scary. these platforms don't just home communities: they're engines, with tendencies. including numerous ways in which these platforms are implicated in youth suicide.
I am absolutely convinced that children should be discouraged from these engines just as they should be discouraged from alcohol.
I totally recognise that if that means these platforms demand proof of ID, that changes their privacy profile and some people will choose to stop participating.
perhaps this can offer some stimulus for other ways of online community forming. Thanks everyone here: I've participated in a few online conversations about the topic this week, and this is the only interesting one :)
Alternative to archive.md, archive.ph
Text-only:
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https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1S2nVb...
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|curl -K/dev/stdin -Agooglebot > 1.htm
firefox ./1.htm
links -dump 1.htm|sed -n '/Effect/,/region./p'
https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1S5G8h...
https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1S5sYp...
I grew up without television. We had a TV until I was 7, but it was never left on, and I was rarely allowed to watch it.
When I was 9 we had a cheap TV for about 3 months and it broke. Family decided we didn't need one.
At 36 I got a TV for a couple years. My kids watched Blue's Clues, etc.
At 38, I again got a TV for a couple years. Then decided dumb late night shows were not helping the insomnia, so cancelled cable, but started streaming HBO.
Since then, I have enjoyed high quality streaming series on occasion. But no live TV, no TV "news", and strictly avoid anything with ads.
When I see a live TV on, with the strange voices and non-logic of ads, and the bizarre posturing they call "news", I get a little sick. Even "nature" and "history" shows have strange pacing and repetition. The transparent sucking sound of ads needing tamed attention-providers warps everything.
I think being sheltered from regular TV, TV ads, and TV news, has been tremendously positive for my mind and life.
Not being exposed to "social" media sites, which are often not actually social, and often unhealthy when they are, is a great win. Quality can sometimes survive in rare small social-conversation sites, not driven by ads or agenda.
I'm all for keeping kids away from social media. My main concern is how we verify that they are under 16 [0].
> showing my ID [in person] was a simple, controlled transaction: one person looked at it for three seconds, handed it back, and forgot about it. The information never left that moment. But online, that same verification process transforms into something far more risky. A digital journey through countless servers, databases, and third-party services, each one a potential point of failure.
> What appears to be the same simple request "please verify your identity", becomes fundamentally different when mediated by technology. The question isn't whether these digital systems will be compromised, but when. And unlike that movie theater clerk who can't perfectly recall my birthdate minutes after seeing it, computers have perfect memory. They store, copy, backup, and transmit our most sensitive information through networks we don't control, to companies we've never heard of, under policies we'll never read.
To all the parents defending this: you are responsible for your children and what they do.
Passing laws that affect all of us because you are too lazy and ineffectual to raise your children properly is unacceptable.
The infovacuuming phase of social networks is complete. Training datasets grabbed, social graphs built, biometry compiled.
Now it's very logical to spin that expensive infrastructure down, removing free communication channels which can dangerously synchronize people against the state, and leaving only channels of control: digital ID, CDBC and a white list of governmental "services", all else outlawed.
People of 2010s uploaded their personal data into the cloud because they thought that was cool, people of 2030s will do because their telescreens demand them so.
Everyone who thinks this will stop at "think about the children" is beyond all repair.
The real news is that age verification will be required to use a search engine from the 27th. This has flown completely under the radar because of the social media ban.
Initially, it will only be required if you're logged in. Obviously that won't be effective, so the next logical step would be to require that everyone logs in to use a search engine.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-11/age-verification-sear...
I support this greatly. But I think instead of debating whether this makes sense or not, or speculating, let's consider that it is already in effect and consider it an experiment. Let's see how Australia is doing in 10 or 15 years, will those kids be resentful or regret the ban when they're 30?
Extremes are bad on either end. unrestricted internet access, even to those who can't defend themselves against harmful content is an extreme, some balance is long due. Since most other western countries chose to risk their kids in the name of liberty, let's wait and see whose trade off works out for the best instead of speculating what will or won't happen.
I wish more countries would experiment like this, and even more countries would learn.
You can't argue for UBI or drug decriminalization because some country experimented and succeeded and then oppose this sort of stuff. In the US, states are supposed to experiment with laws like this, but they don't have enough power to regulate interstate communication or commerce.
I suspect kids just find their way around things.
And then they're on platforms with zero protections because nobody knows they're a teen... end result is worse.
I was in college when this really cool idea came out: a social network database which only college students could join, regulating access to students@*.edu emails, only [obviously: TheFaceBook]. When distant relatives began sending `friend request`s, just a few years later, I left that platform forever.
Seems like local school districts could reintroduce such a platform (perhaps one already exists) for class discussions to continue outside of the classroom... but without the temptations of the outside world [which these u16 bans rightfully seek to limit]. Hyper-walled gardens, actual community-based social spaces, sans predation.
As always, I imagine with the unlimited timelessness of childhood multiple clever work-arounds will persist, regardless of any law. May the cat-and-mouse be merry.
I am so glad a country finally took action. Can't wait to see data on its effects. At this point in time I lost interest in nuanced discussions about the details here. We are in one big experiment and it might end in catastrophy. We need counter experiments and hard data fast.
And, of course, as usual, this law, like all it's others in the rest of the world, will do absolutely nothing in protecting kids. It will instead only create a huge national security hacker paradise because everyone will use these so-called "age verification" services, which aren't exactly known for their security.
These platforms are heavy censored with a direct line to governments. This will push kids to other platforms with less censorship. That's a major benefit.
As we go down this road platforms will need to be banned for everyone. For example VK wasn't on the list and they won't implement age checks. They and many other sites will need to be banned until you are left with a white list of acceptance sites. Add in age verification on those sites for everyone.
Kids will learn how to overcome the ban. VPNs will become the standard.
There is a pattern of government using moral panics to exert greater control. Australia and New Zealand seem to be used as a testbed for projects which are introduced elsewhere.
The UK government wishes to police social media more heavily, and has been using internet porn and illegal immigration (two unrelated issues) to push through digital ID. The exact same mentality - controversy, panic, dubious solution...
In this case, we have a genuine issue and a dubious solution.
The answer: meet in person. Talk to people offline.
We really need the age verification standards to catch up. I think there was stuff in the works, but something like OAuth that doesn't require the two third parties to know about each other and the browser/client is in the middle.
I'm Australian and just had to age verify on X/Twitter. They used some app called "selfie" and took a pic and said I was verified. That was it.
This social media ban is not so much about banning kids from social media.
It's more about banning social media apps/companies from accessing kids.
The SM apps are entirely about exploitation of their audiences via algorithms to push advertising and political positions. That needs to be stopped.
This is a start.
It's a bit like the bans on under 18 (Australia) drinking without supervision. We know that the bans aren't "perfect", but they work for the majority of the time for the majority of the kids.
Besides this being ineffective for the motivated, it might have a subtle antitrust effect.
As kids find alternative platforms, perhaps they will be vendor locked to them instead of the Meta empire.
This is great. Even if it doesn’t actually keep teens off, it sends the message that social media is bad for you. Just like smoking and drinking.
How are they going to verify it's not some kid telling he's 18 with a fake picture? Demand a photo of driver's license? Got one here, right out borrowed from dad's pocket. The article also mentions inferring age from the usage which sounds as vague as it is.
The counter point is that doesn't this basically mean everyone, including adults, now has to identify in order to use social media? Without a national electronic ID where personal data never leaves government's systems (they've already got it) and the social network just receives a yes/no bit when they ask "is this person old enough?" this would mean a huge amounts of identification data would be willingly and voluntarily "leaked" to foreign private services. Scan your passport and send it to China in order to use TikTok?
This mass identification process could either make also large groups of adult people leave social media sites or condition people to upload their ID data to whatever site happens to ask for it.
Please explain me anybody, why not to ban any software which is not FOSS? It will lead to the world I want to live in. Banning just social media just for kids makes the Government to do too much for us - D E C I D I N G who is a kid and what is a social media.
It is similar to the tax approach - it is not bad that we are paying taxes, what is bad that the Government implies how to count the taxes.
Just what we need, even more government censorship.
Ban kids, implement identity verification checks, remove ban on kids, keep identity verification checks.
I like this article more: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyp9d3ddqyo
It goes through numbers, potential ways it's gonna be implemented, and also which other platforms are affected.
For example:
> Dating websites are excluded along with gaming platforms, as are AI chatbots, which have recently made headlines for allegedly encouraging children to kill themselves and for having "sensual" conversations with minors.
It wasn't enough the online pedo or weirdos trying to get your kids through chats or games.
It wasn't enough the instagram meat grinder that leads to depression, social anxiety, etc.
Now we even have to worry about chatbots leading kids to suicide.
What a hell of a world are we building - no wonder people don't want to make kids anymore.
If all the kids start pretending to be grownups, they end up escaping all the protections put in place to protect kids in the first place.
In football we call this an own goal
When I was a teenager I responded to bans by trying to get around them like warning stickers on music.
Talking about the dangers of D&D or the Satanic Panic seemed idiotic to me and still do.
But when people explained why something was bad I would listen. Did their concerns seem legitimate?
I'm 50 and I've never smoked a cigarette. In the movies it looked cool. But I saw older people with horrible health issues and also the smoke smelled horrible and made their breath stink. Those people were not lying to me about the danger of tobacco.
So are people lying about the dangers of social media? But if you think it is bad for teenagers then how do you convince them that it is? I would rather have commercials with teenagers talking about how they were depressed or developed eating disorders or whatever from looking at social media. Then they stopped and now they are happier with more real life interactions.
I can tell you that I deleted my facebook account in 2016 (didn't use it much) and haven't been on instagram in 5 years. I don't miss it at all. All facebook ever did was annoy and anger me.
I think a better approach might be to require that any algorithm used to suggest content to users must be made open source so that people whose world views are being shaped by the content you're feeding them can analyse how you're deciding what to show them.
I feel like there's definitely a problem here with social media and its effect on society, but our first approach should be to increase transparency and accountability, rather than to start banning things by force of law.
This would be a nonstarter in the US. SCOTUS has ruled "minors are entitled to a significant measure of First Amendment protection." (Erznoznik v. City of Jacksonville, 422 U.S. 205 (1975)) This sort of blanket ban would collide with that.
It's funny because Facebook and these social networks are always testing in Australia and New Zealand because it's a whole English-speaking society but it's a bit isolated and far away.
So far from my experience this has been kind of low impact for adult users with existing accounts. Social media companies obviously have extremely good demographic data on their existing users as targeted marketing and influence is their core business.
Unfortunately this legislation hasn't addressed any of my real concerns with social media (it's the algorithms and engagement farming) and it is creating new problems.
I wonder how teens who already use social media will be affected compared with kids who won’t have accounts until age 16.
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.
A lot of the criticism is based on the concept that it won't be technically watertight. But the key is that it doesn't have to be watertight to work. Social media is all about network effects. Once most kids are on there, everyone has to be on there. If you knock the percentage down far enough, you break the network effect to the point where those who don't want to don't feel pressured to. If that is all it does, it's a benefit.
My concerns about this are that it will lead to
(a) normalising people uploading identification documents and hence lead to people becoming victims of scams. This won't be just kids - scammers will be challenging all kinds of people including vulnerable elderly people saying "this is why we need your id". People are going to lose their entire life savings because of this law.
(b) a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly.
Because it's politically unattractive, I don't think enough attention has been given to the harms that will flow from these laws.