alt Hacker NewsAustralia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
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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.
Excessive social media is detrimental (to everyone). Age restrictions are not a good solution, it effectively categorises it as an adult activity, and glorifies it further.
Kids are very good at identifying hypocritical behaviour and scare tactics. It'll end up counterproductive like the D.A.R.E. program.
If the kids are forced out, the adults should be too.
Absolute joke, most Australian parents will just ID for the kids, if the kids don't figure out how to get around it themselves, especially the typical ipad-kids and their parents.
The average Australian punter is getting absolutely screwed by our current government and all involved parties.
Is the mechanism of the ban actually going to work, or is it just going to train more kids how to use fake IDs and VPNs?
I have kids and I like this but as we know, prohibition only makes the drink stronger and the thirst deeper.
Although I think that social media causes issues with underdeveloped brains, If this is about confirming age at the point of login, then this is really about identifying everyone and not protecting children. If this is the case, you know they are going to use this data to target people for speech related things.
Here is an overview of related restrictions in other countries [1]. Actually, in many European countries, Google does not grant access to Gemini for people under 16yo [2,3].
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/articles/clyd1dvrll1o
This feels like one of those policies that sounds great at a podium but is going to age horribly
Look. As gen z person who basically grew up with tech and social media and had it since I was ~12, there is no way that any ban that is not direct id verification will work, this will instead make the forbidden fruit more tasty and teens more tech literate since they will look for ways around the ban. It feels like a lot of older people are more detached to the times when they first got access to Internet and social media and assume that its all dopamine hits and brain rot, while in reality its curiosity for a bigger world beyond school and limited things that you can do while being underage, cheap entertainment, knowledge.
I actually feel that teens shouldn't be on social media at all. But I also don't think I should be able to lord that opinion over other people via fiat.
Sugar is pretty bad for teens as well but I don't think banning that will solve health issues anymore than this will help teens.
Personal decisions > a government trying to be mom
Governments always end up doing the most damage when their control is "for the good of their constituents."
This might seem like a good thing while they're parenting for you on things you agree with, however, there will likely come a time when they do something you don't and by then it will be too late.
i agree there are a lot of concerns with allowing teens / children to use social media as it is today without any sort of way to help them benefit from these tools instead of being harmed by them (which is sadly far too common).
but my concern is that will lead to a less educated population. there is positive, life changing learning that can happen on social media. kids finding their tribe by connecting with people like them in other parts of the country / world. kids discovering skills / crafts they become passionate about. heck, even learning how to communicate effectively with others. i think social media is a treasure when it is used correctly.
ofc, i agree with the concerns and ofc the right "solution" is one that enables the positives and minimizes (and ideally eliminates) the negatives. and having social media as a closed, proprietary, centralized product that can't be tweaked (e.g, choose your own custom algorithm, or filter out a "type" of content that you don't want to see, etc.) is the core problem here. a decentralized social media would allow even regulators to apply much more fine-grained controls so that they don't have to remove access entirely.
but sadly bec. we don't have a good way to apply fine grained controls to how we use social media, it seems blanket banning entirely for an entire group of people is the best approach. like, i get why it may be necessary (it seems like most / many australians are currently on board), but i really hope this inspires people to build better social platforms that give more control to users.
Father of four here.
I will do everything in my power to keep my kids' connected to their social networks. I have a strongly opposing view: social media is one of the best inventions and there is no way or need to protect people from participating.
With all the negative effects they bring the society has to learn how to live with it instead of pretend fighting.
Future generation of hackers.
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.
why are they not going for the true root cause of the problem?
stop dilution our attention - shorts, infinite scrolls, predatory algorithms - this needs to be controlled really
and yeah of course scams and pedos etc - surely Big Tech can crack down on that also
again why a good behaving majority needs to suffer, because of minority crap + bad incentives of ads driven platforms?
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've not seen any mention of how this affect families.
A lot of my family growing up lived in different cities. We kept in touch via social media. PSTN was expensive and impractical. Postal mail was obviously less practical.
Does this new ban move kids to using email to keep in touch with friends and family? Are they now completely isolated from the rest of the world?
Controlling access to any substance is a long process, and the motives aren’t always clear at the beginning.
I’m not sure why Australian policymakers chose to take this step now, but regardless of the motive, it feels like a meaningful starting point. Social media’s engagement-driven echo chamber model has contributed to a deeply divided world, and governments stepping in can at least make parents’ jobs a little easier.
I’m concerned this will drive teens to dodgy apps and services that have lax data security and no oversight.
Discord isn’t banned, but Twitch is? Interesting.
Surely Discord harbours more bullying than Twitch (where image sharing isn’t even a feature).
Honestly, this feels like another case where the headline sounds bold, but the real impact will be minimal. Any age-based restriction ends up in the same place: platforms are forced to collect more data just to “prove” someone’s age. When the target group is teenagers, that’s basically a privacy disaster waiting to happen.
From a technical perspective, this is impossible to enforce cleanly. Anyone with even basic internet literacy can bypass it with a VPN + fresh account + throwaway email. And of course, the teens most determined to get around it will be the ones the policy is supposedly protecting. The bigger issue is the false sense of security. Parents and politicians get to feel like something has been “done,” while the actual online risks don’t disappear — they just move somewhere less visible. If the goal is genuinely improving teen mental health, digital literacy and real support systems work far better than regulations that will inevitably leak.
I "endured" the same simply by virtue of my upbringing: our parents de facto banned not only social media but even just mobile phones until our mid teens.
Can't say I mourn it, quite the opposite.
So, good move by our Aussie friends.
Including youtube is where it became stupid, even teachers pushed back against that
I wonder how teens who already use social media will be affected compared with kids who won’t have accounts until age 16.
One purpose of laws us that they clearly state: this is good and this is bad. Many such barriers are cultural, but sometimes they do not work or are actively attacked, so they may be backed with a law.
Next election is in 2028, so 15 an 16 y.o. will be able to vote. I expect a strong preference in that group, but IIUC Australia has single seat per district, so I'm not sure if that changes the result.
This bit a community discord server of mine where I am a mod last night since we have a large oceanic contingent, somehow NZ got swept up in it too and we scrambled a bit to change our onboarding and other general policies.
Putting "teens" in the title is misleading. The ban is for ages 15 and below.
I don't like censorship.
I also don't like antisocial media.
Still, I dislike censorship more than that antisocial media.
I feel like just making kids lie about our age was pretty effective back in the day. Those of us who lied knew we were going into adult spaces, hid our irl identities, and learned how to behave.
Then Facebook convinced people social media was supposed to be about your "real" identity, which made us sitting ducks for scammers and propaganda. Now we have governments demanding we provide our identity papers before we are allowed to participate.
This is a good start to protect kids! Let's hope it helps families and makes the internet a better place for everyone.
Did they publish a list of what they consider social media sites? If you are 15 and active on GitHub is this now considered against the law?
Frankly, I would have been pissed if this were the case when I was a teen and I got a lot of healthy & useful value out of social media.
That said, some of the subcommunities I've seen created, particularly among young women, seem obviously unhealthy/toxic and regulation is probably needed there. I'm thinking of things like '#edtwt'.
But I also think we need to avoid ruining things for smart, responsible kids by focusing on the worst.
I have seen a swift uptick in "Australians" negatively posting on social media networks about the new restriction.
Notably the central theme presented by these same "Australians" was that there should be no changes, limits or restrictions to the types of information collected by social media companies, or how they handle such personal information, rather that everything should be exactly as it was... how very convenient.
Some were even so incensed about their personal privacy that they wrote how much they disagree with having to share their SSN with online platforms.
As many of you would already know, mentioning a "SSN" is a give away that the "Australians" are not genuine people. These accounts are perpetuating the lie that Australians must provide a government identity to access these services. While an ID can be used, it's not mandatory and is actually one of the less convenient options, in comparison to 3rd party verification or a face photo.
Seems a bit of a disingenuous argument to complain about taking a photo of one's face for verification, but having no qualms about using the social media network to post photos of oneself for public viewing.
An absurd decision with dangerous second order effects, many of which lead to VPNs and other privacy tools being next, just look at UK hyping and building that up right now. I hope they will vote accordingly when they're of age, not forgetting what liberties were taken away from them in the name of very dubious benefits, easily circumvented, and prone to exposing them to greater danger going through unofficial channels. Trying to really address the issues younger generations are facing is clearly too difficult for the geriatric, decrepit ruling class that just won't let go, and this helps them further every government's ambitions of increasingly regulating the means of communication between people. Actually, it's not that it's difficult, they simply don't care.
A bunch of people in local LGBT community Discord servers that marked themselves as NSFW have been locked out of those servers and now need to prove their age to get back in.
These communities already had active mods that would remove anyone underage that they found, so it doesn't really make sense in this case that Discord is now requiring them to prove their ages.
Meanwhile kids are finding ways around the ban. Kids are asking their older looking friends to pass facial scans for them.
Awesome. I hope they do the same in Europe. Children should not be addicted to TikTok.
So Australian teens will finally learn how they computers and home wifi works.
Everyone supporting this in the comments deserves to live under CCP style internet censorship.
Makes one wonder if/how quickly they will come for closed WhatsApp groups and Telegram channels next.
Hacker News is social media, isn't it?
Social media is cigarettes. There are lots of studies showing the negative impacts to say that limiting their reach is probably good for society and individuals.
Just about all arguments against this are the same arguments that would stop governments limiting booze or tabaco
I don’t know why they don’t just ban or restrict the hardware. It’ll be easier to enforce.
I could have sworn china did something like this a decade ago, but sure World first LOL
Should have been done 20 years ago, all the millions of miseries that could have been prevented, if politicians hadn't fallen for the Zuckerberg/Sandberg narrative.
Just a reminder that the Australian government has chosen to not ban sports betting advertisements including live odds and crosses to betting companies inside sports broadcasts
that kids watch
And parents have asked the gov to ban
But they won't because tax revenue
So don't try and tell me this government is all about the kids
Many of us grew up without social media and turned out to be fine!
Anyone arguing against this ban is delusional what social media does to undeveloped brains. There are plenty of studies to support this as well.
Social media is harmful to children. We are talking about 10 yo having access to non-stop stream of inappropriate content for their age. You can blame the parents but social media is now fact of life that cannot be so easily escaped.
Like buying alcohol, gambling, driving, voting and other similar things which are restricted under particular age, the discussion should be about at what age is safe for children to participate in the public discourse.
I really hope similar controls are implemented across EU.
How does a country effectively enforce this? Below is how they propose doing this. If you don't have any form of verification of your actual age, it's seems like they are just going on what the user says ( self reports). How can a company be found liable if a used lies about their age?
>the days leading to the ban, some teenagers said that they were prompted to verify their ages using a facial analysis feature, but that it gave inaccurate estimates. The law also states that companies cannot ask users to provide government-issued identification as the only way to prove their age because of privacy concerns.