NEWS: Australia bans social media for under-16s
What is the new law, how does it work? How will children respond?
As of December 10th 2025, Australian teenagers and children under the age of 16 are no longer allowed to open a social media account. The ten social media platforms listed in the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024 are:
Facebook
Instagram
Snapchat
Threads
TikTok
X/Twitter
YouTube
Reddit
Kick
Twitch
On the face of it, this list captures many of the mainstream social media platforms such as Insta, X and TikTok, but it leaves out Roblox and Discord in favour of targeting streaming and video services such as Twitch, Kick and YouTube.
The law will not punish children or their parents for getting around the rules, but instead places the burden on the companies themselves to ensure younger users cannot access a personal account. As with the UK’s Online Safety Act, the pressure is on social media owners to create and use age verification tools in order to comply with the law.
The arguments for a social media ban are obvious, removing younger teenagers from platforms which are addictive, full of junk content and could lead to inappropriate interactions, feels intuitively beneficial.
However, we at DigiShield Kids feel that these bans and similar efforts to curb access to the mainstream internet, will fail and cause more harm than good.
Will the ban work?
Yes and no. Many teenagers will comply, move to other platforms or isolate themselves inside group chats with their friends - limiting their exposure to TikTok etc.
But - many will not comply, and find ways around the rules, especially since they cannot be punished for owning an account.
They [the kids] also flooded Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s account with comments that the ban “didn’t work” and that they’ll “be here forever”. “It didn’t work bud,” one comment read. “So we’re all still here?” another read.
“I have a 12 year old daughter. She and her friends were identified as 17+ simply by putting on some fake lashes and makeup. Even without the [make-up] she was identified as 14+. So either way, these young girls are likely exposed to more inappropriate chats or content than they were before.” — Jillian, NSW
“My thirteen-year-old daughter still has access to all her social media accounts this morning, and she verified her age via facial scanning. I am hoping that they are still working their way through and she will be booted off soon, if not then it’s a fail for us.” — Alison, NSW
Quotes taken from Reddit r/Australia discussing the new law
Age verification technology is easily tricked, especially with borderline age ranges such as 14-17 years old. We also know the huge privacy implications that come with these identity and age verification tools, such as the recent Discord identity breach.
Another familiar term which will likely become a household word in Australia soon, are VPNs.
VPN use in Britain has exploded since the introduction of the Online Safety Act. As one analyst wrote:
Unintended consequences are mounting. By sending minors tunnelling through VPNs, the UK law may have inadvertently exposed them to riskier, less regulated online spaces. Many free VPN services are not privacy shields at all, but data harvesting tools that sell users’ information to unknown operators overseas. In trying to wall-off harmful content, governments may be nudging minors into darker, less-regulated corners of the internet.
With many companies hosted outside the national borders of Britain and Australia, the battle to enforce bans will likely result in larger companies being forced to comply with the regulations, whilst smaller and potentially more risky apps and platforms may see the rewards of greater new traffic as outweighing the possibility of a fine.
It will be interesting to note in the coming days and weeks whether VPN use does increase, and whether smaller social media apps like BeReal, Yubo and Kik recieve more users, as well as WhatsApp, Discord, Signal, Telegram, Roblox and other large sites.
Ultimately digital media being so fluid and resisting boundaries, videos from TikTok and memes from Snapchat will find their way onto the screens of 13 year old Australians. Proponents of the ban are hoping that this increased friction will begin to break the problem of excessive phone/screen time, and the distress that bullying, image comparison and stranger contact can cause.
How will children respond?
We can look at the controversial South Korean attempt to ban teenagers from playing video games late at night, the so-called ‘shutdown law’.
The long term effects of the ban demonstrated that it had a minimal to barely noticeable impact on reducing gaming:
Legalizing a ban of online gaming late at night for youths caused an increase in the predicted probability of being in a high-ranked Internet user group by 1.6 percent points, a decrease in the predicted probability of Internet addiction by 0.7 percent points, and an increase in sleep duration of 1.5 min
Teenagers simply adapted and circumvented. Fake IDs, parent or sibling login details, VPNs and platform switching combined to make the ban unenforceable. We suspect that Australian and potentially other teenagers around the world will do the same thing:
Use fake identification
Use an older person’s details (parent, friend, sibling, info online, stolen)
Bypass the national filters on the platform through a VPN
Move to alternative and less well-regulated platforms
One of the problems with the internet is that there is always something worse out there. Pushing children from relatively visible platforms like Instagram and YouTube, into the arms of Discord, Kik and similar private, inaccessible spaces, may make things worse.
We shall keep monitoring the progress and outcomes of these laws, and post updates as they come. A deep dive on VPNs is on the way, as well as some pre-Christmas content.