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Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

• JSR_FDED 10mo ago
  I’m not against teens communicating with each other online, but I’m very much against the algorithm-driven dopamine addiction factories that are social media today. Imagine a whole generation of teens with attention spans longer than 15 seconds…they might actually realize their incredible potential!
  • lm28469 10mo ago
    If you ever worked with people who fully grew up with modern social media and just entered the workforce you know we're already doomed, there is no recovery from this, that's why governments are starting to act
    • whimsicalism 10mo ago
      alarmist nonsense
      • JSR_FDED 10mo ago
        By all means tell us why
        • whimsicalism 10mo ago
          younger generation is earning more in the workforce than past generations, clearly they haven't been too cooked by phones. even though i'm in the younger generation and have less experience in the world, i can recognize pearl clutching and moral panics when I see them.
          • lm28469 10mo ago
            > younger generation is earning more in the workforce than past generations Inflation adjusted wages and purchasing power is flat for, at least, the past 50 years... and even if it wasn't it wouldn't mean anything regarding new workers capabilities/attention span/&c. https://i0.wp.com/economicsfromthetopdown.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/epi_pay_gap.png?fit=1280%2C868&ssl=1 https://i0.wp.com/economicsfromthetopdown.com/wp-content/upl... https://assets.weforum.org/editor/Xkzpnpz_lnI-0WbTH1LJVUdu3JaQrM47Y1BpDDMpXro.jpg https://assets.weforum.org/editor/Xkzpnpz_lnI-0WbTH1LJVUdu3J... The propaganda is so good people who have it worse than their parents and grand parents think they're living in the greatest times ever.
            • whimsicalism 10mo ago
              those charts are different from the point that i am making, which can be seen here: https://i0.wp.com/www.edwardconard.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Median-Market-Income-By-Age-And-Generation.png?fit=803%2C499&ssl=1 https://i0.wp.com/www.edwardconard.com/wp-content/uploads/20... https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/has-intergenerational-progress-stalled-income-growth-over-five-generations-of-americans.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/has-intergenerat... the “propaganda is so good” and yet anyone on the internet has seen the charts you’re linking dozens of times. fwiw, your chart makes a lot of assumptions by subsetting to hourly, excluding benefits, and using a different inflation adjustment for income vs. productivity (the last one is 100% a chart crime). every time they make the choice that will make the gap most striking, https://www.piie.com/sites/default/files/realtime/files/2015/07/lawrence20150721-figure5.png https://www.piie.com/sites/default/files/realtime/files/2015...
• Erikun 10mo ago
  It will be interesting to see how this pans out.
  • jaimex2 10mo ago
    About as well as the anti-pirate site blocking. Were the world leaders in piracy.
• ChrisArchitect 10mo ago
  Australia compliance etc etc... .... But then also global measures? > Teen account holders under 18 everywhere will get a version of Reddit with more protective safety features built in, including stricter chat settings, no ads personalization or sensitive ads, and no access to NSFW or mature content.
• kevin061 10mo ago
  Awesome. I hope they do the same in Europe. Children should not be addicted to TikTok.
  • d3Xt3r 10mo ago
    Forget the children, no one should be subjected to the brainrot that is TikTok. Or any form of vertical short videos for that matter.
    • kevin061 10mo ago
      True.
      • nxor 10mo ago
        Could not have said it better. The harm these apps are doing is so immense. Why form any hobby at all when you can scroll four hours of tik tok a day?
    • AndrewDucker 10mo ago
      I'm not sure that "vertical videos" are any worse than horizontal ones, round ones, pentagonal ones, or any other layout.
      • nrhrjrjrjtntbt 10mo ago
        I am not sure. If you classified usefulness of video by aspect ratio it might be a good correlation with landscape. With 4 by 3 being the best.
• about3fitty 10mo ago
  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.
  • Bratmon 10mo ago
    I think you're 180° backwards on that. How many alternative platforms are there really going to be that can afford to develope and operate the legally-mandated age-detection ML-models? Especially after the bureaucrats see that the law isn't working and start looking for scapegoats without massive lawyer teams to make an example of
    • samdoesnothing 10mo ago
      Why would they do that? There are plenty of platforms that simply won't care, and there's stuff like Mastodon et al.
      • Bratmon 10mo ago
        The law tends to be pretty good at caring about you when you don't care about it.
        • cindyllm 10mo ago
          [dead]
• N_Lens 10mo ago
  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).
  • hallole 10mo ago
    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!
    • protocolture 10mo ago
      >well, hey, they actually did it. They passed legislation, its not clear at all that they succeeded.
      • immibis 10mo ago
        They actually did the experiment. While we're over here thinking social media is probably bad for kids and wondering what would happen if they weren't allowed to use it., Australia actually did that. Soon we'll actually know what happens when kids aren't allowed to use social media.
    • rainonmoon 10mo ago
      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.
      • 10mo ago
• bob_theslob646 10mo ago
  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.
  • Avicebron 10mo ago
    > How can a company be found liable if a used lies about their age? You make them bleed money when you find they are in violation. They either figure it out or they go under as a company. There isn't a natural law saying companies have a right to exist.
    • samdoesnothing 10mo ago
      Or they leave the country, which would then be very unpopular for the governing parties involved.
    • nrhrjrjrjtntbt 10mo ago
      More akin to their data centre electricity costs. They pay it and move on.
  • OhioMan2943 10mo ago
    How can seatbelts be enforced? This is preposterous and imbecilic- if there isn't a policeman inside every car checking every minute how will we make sure that people are wearing them. Clearly there is no point in trying!
    • wiredpancake 10mo ago
      There is seatbelt cameras in Australia. They are everywhere, they can also be mobile and placed almost anywhere. These camera are mounted high so they can view down in through the windscreen. They automatically issue a $1,251 for not wearing one to the license holder.
• nacozarina 10mo ago
  this is an egregious violation of their civil rights. the law of unintended consequences looms large.
  • NoPicklez 10mo ago
    Like what? Kids not being able to do particular things until they're of age? That's much of an egregious violation of their civil rights.
    • bccdee 10mo ago
      I think you could argue teenagers have a right to discuss political issues in the public forum. That's basically the definition of good citizenship, and (for better or worse) social media is the public forum of the day. Kids don't go from zero rights at 17 to full rights at 18; minors' rights are limited, but they do have rights. I dunno if that'd fly in Australian courts though.
      • NoPicklez 10mo ago
        Well kids can discuss political issues across other discussion boards just not those on the social media sites impacted by the ban. They can also continue to do it say, in person in public. I think the discussion of political issues in a sensible way on platforms like instagram, tiktok, X, Reddit etc for those ages is perhaps a lower priority than the mental health impacts that those platforms in general provide.
        • bccdee 10mo ago
          What other discussion boards? They've all been subsumed by Reddit. I was on Reddit a lot as a teenager. I was the kind of argumentative kid who likes to iron out the wrinkles in their beliefs by defending them, and the internet offers and endless stream of people willing to discuss niche subjects. It had a positive impact on me. What mental health impacts? We haven't really established that social media has any, writ large. Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation has been very influential in teen social media ban discourse (in fact, I'm not sure the Australian ban would have happened without it), but Haidt never manages to establish a link between social media and depression or anxiety [1]. People just assume social media is really bad for teens, but the extent to which this is true, the proportion of the population for which it is true, and the extent to which social media may actually be valuable to some teens (e.g. to gay kids in conservative towns who are looking for community) is just not established. I have a real problem with policy that seeks to cut teenagers off from communities they're part of without any interest in establishing the value provided by or the harm caused by those communities. [1]: Haidt notes that teen hospitalizations related to mental illness have risen since the early 2000s, discounts the recession and climate change as possible explanations, and then just assumes that social media is the only other explanation (it isn't; for instance, teens started getting hospitalized way more after Obamacare lowered the cost of hospital stays). Elsewhere, he's cited a self-report survey indicating that social media use had a high mental health impact on teens, but the indicated impact of social media was greater than the impact of binge drinking, which was greater than the impact of eating fruit, which was greater than the impact of having survived sexual assault (https://bsky.app/profile/michaelhobbes.bsky.social/post/3kxsnikdgre2v https://bsky.app/profile/michaelhobbes.bsky.social/post/3kxs...). So, that survey is not reliable. Basically, Haidt doesn't actually have any evidence of how bad social media is for teens. He relies on his audience already believing this intuitively.
• demarq 10mo ago
  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
  • add-sub-mul-div 10mo ago
    Not really, it gives them justification to more thoroughly remove privacy and anonymity in order to make sure the age and identity of the user are more confidently known.
  • squigz 10mo ago
    I'm fairly confident that's not how it works, but am happy to be proven wrong?
• deminature 10mo ago
  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.
  • NoPicklez 10mo ago
    Pretty much aligns with how I have felt it here in Aus as well
  • bigfatkitten 10mo ago
    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.
    • rkagerer 10mo ago
      > pass the facial age detection Are you kidding me? So the answer is let's let some random vendors used by said corporation scan her face? This feels like using DNA sequencing to confirm you're tall enough to ride the rollercoaster.
      • bigfatkitten 10mo ago
        It’s just as reliable as you’d expect from a system that relies on shitty cellphone camera pics. They’re trying to guess the age of someone who could pass for 11 or for 22, and who with careful use of makeup could push that figure in either direction.
      • 10mo ago
• falaki 10mo ago
  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.
  • tartoran 10mo ago
    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.
  • AngryData 10mo ago
    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.
    • anakaine 10mo ago
      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.
    • falaki 10mo ago
      Alcohol, tobacco and many other products have age restrictions, so do cars and many other products of the modern society. Social media can and should have age restrictions.
      • ethin 10mo ago
        This is a nonsense take that gets perpetuated over and over. For some reason. Purchasing alcohol or buying a car is not the same as verifying your age on an internet property. They aren't even comparable. This is just as dumb as saying "well you have to verify your age to go into a bar". Sure, but does the bartender or salesman who sells you the alcohol completely remember every pixel of your photo or video selfy, permanently? Or do they just remember your face more generally? The problem with these age verification laws is that they harm everybody, adults and kids. They don't do anything to protect kids and their sole purpose is a way for governments to suppress things they don't like. Any age verification technology (be it age estimation or similar) has a permanent record of the photo ID or video selfies (or whatever you use to prove your age) that you give it. Forever. If these systems didn't have those records, the result would be you having to verify your age every time you visit the website. There is a massive, massive difference between getting alcohol at a bar, or going to a strip club or similar, and providing your photo ID to a bouncer or bartender, who probably won't remember your ID after 5 minutes, versus a computer which permanently remembers it. That is the differentiator.
• deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
• protocolture 10mo ago
  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.
  • batiudrami 10mo ago
    Isolating children? They’re schoolchildren! They see their peers at school every day.
    • deadbolt 10mo ago
      Isolated from ads sold by the social media companies lol
    • deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
    • protocolture 10mo ago
      We already have reports about disabled kids experiencing suicidal ideation due to losing their only non family social connections. Not to mention that Australias youth are quite politically engaged, we have a news network entirely run by teenagers that just had their service gutted.
  • emulatedmedia 10mo ago
    Isolating children from what? If anything, this will make they spend more time with their friends and family
    • squigz 10mo ago
      What about the kids who are bullied and isolated at school? What about those who have an abusive family?
      • deadbolt 10mo ago
        What about the kids who are bullied on social media?
• cal_dent 10mo ago
  I don't necessarily think this as it is will "work" but I'm all for someone at least trying to do something. Yes, there are a bunch of externalities and potential second order effects that don't sit well with me but, at this stage, I'd rather some attempt at trying to regulate than throwing up hands and saying its all too hard. Also, dont buy the this is the slippery slope to more authoritarianism etc. as an argument against it because if they're going to go down that path they would anyway whether they did this or not frankly Anyway, it might not work 100% of the time, hell maybe even <10% but any additional friction to knock this kind of social media from being so ubiquitous is a small victory in my eyes
  • eviks 10mo ago
    If you just want to try something that doesn't work, why not legislate touching grass every morning without all the downsides of a dumb blanket ban?
    • cal_dent 10mo ago
      Yes, excellent idea. Let’s do that too
      • eviks 10mo ago
        No, not too, but instead. What's your argument for doing dumb harmful stuff instead of dumb harmless stuff?
        • throwaway290 10mo ago
          "I don't necessarily think this as it is will work" != "harmful" or "dumb" Like do warnings on cigarettes work? I definitely saw a guy move cigs to older pack he had from china because he didn't like ugly warning picture on the new pack. Do mandatory id checks work? If I saw some kids get their hands on smokes does it mean "it doesn't work" and therefore there should be no limits on big tobacco? is a start
        • fylo 10mo ago
• taylorius 10mo ago
  I sense a great disturbance in the force - millions of teens muttering "for fuck's sake" and tossing their phones onto the sofa.
  • Simulacra 10mo ago
    The force is the sunlight that will shine upon their skin when they go outside!
  • pmsh 10mo ago
    Well it's Australia, this is just one more drop in an ocean of anti-youth policy...
• ed_mercer 10mo ago
  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.
• metalman 10mo ago
  any kid who cant figure out how to slide right by a government hack is a looser, and while we should feel a little bad for both of them, presumambly someone will take pity and fix there phones up , and let them know that there is sex and everything on the net
• nephihaha 10mo ago
  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.
  • TimByte 10mo ago
    The offline-socializing point is good, but it's also a cultural shift that won't magically happen because a law is passed. If anything, the hard part is rebuilding the offline spaces and social norms that used to make that easy.
    • nephihaha 10mo ago
      I agree. I had to coax people out after lockdown and it took years. We do need offline spaces. I've been out for a Christmas lunch today. Much more meaningful than meeting on Zoom or whatever. I don't hate technology but I think we have to use it widely.
    • iteria 10mo ago
      Kids are in these spaces because there is no place for them to be. People call the police on unaccompanied kids outside. Teens are banned from malls. Where are teens supposed to be where they won't be harassed. When I was a kid we used to just wander around and chat. There used to be a whole event on Friday evenings where high schoolers would decent on this mall across the street from two movie theaters. We went to the skating ring. There were teen clubs. More. Right now, I can't think of a single place a teen could just hang out besides at each other houses which is mostly what I watch them do. It makes sense why they end up in virtual spaces. They can socialize privately that way.
  • mvdtnz 10mo ago
    What do you think is happening in New Zealand with regards to "moral panic" projects?
• mullingitover 10mo ago
  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.
  • chistev 10mo ago
    Break up the federal government?
    • gentooflux 10mo ago
      I believe they're implying that there's an unhealthy amount of regulatory capture in favor of big tech
    • estimator7292 10mo ago
      We're already on the fast track to becoming an authoritarian state. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine the next step is dissolving congress and installing a new constitution. Or just throwing it out entirely and defining the law of the land on the whims of a senile man
      • ipaddr 10mo ago
        [flagged]
      • paxys 10mo ago
        There's no need to dissolve congress. You instead make sure that (1) a single party stays in power (through gerrymandering, voter suppression and more), (2) the courts are stacked with loyalists and (3) the legislature and courts rubber stamp all decisions of the executive regardless of legality or anything else.
        • lazide 10mo ago
          Sure, but also why wouldn’t they? It’s historically unpopular as an institution, and clearly toothless.
• rcMgD2BwE72F 10mo ago
  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!
  • killingtime74 10mo ago
    Socialising != Social media. Teens can still use messenger, WhatsApp, phonecalls, text or even....face to face!
    • baby 10mo ago
      That's true. I'll say this though: my social life skyrocketed thanks to Facebook when I was ~18. Not sure what kind of impact it would have had earlier, I was def. more of a kid and social medias were not a thing anyway. Makes sense to me to have an age limit considering cyber bullying and teen suicides and all.
      • kahmeal 10mo ago
        Facebook then wasn't what facebook is today. The social media of the early internet was largely a digital expansion of otherwise healthy social norms. Then the internet blew up. Now it's more akin to the drug dealers DARE warned us about. Still waiting on _those_ free drugs, tbh.
      • jsphweid 10mo ago
        What year was it when you were 18? Facebook was enormous for me when I was 18, in 2008, for similar reasons. However, these days facebook is mostly just ads and generic modern feed garbage content in general.
      • rhines 10mo ago
        Social media is no longer social - it's just media. At least for most people anyway. The average user, and probably kids even more so, are just scrolling through. If you're posting as well, or at least commenting on stuff and having discussions with people you know (even if you just know them online), I think that's fine. Like forums, or being in group chats with friends on Facebook, or sharing photos you take with a specific community. It's when you're only consuming (like scrolling TikTok or Instagram), or when your comments are written for the algorithm rather than for actual discussion (like on Reddit, or even Hackernews to an extent), that social media is an issue.
• csense 10mo ago
  RIP freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of the press.
  • RiverCrochet 10mo ago
    Just online, which has been a bad idea from day one due to the evertrending centralization of the Internet, the primary catalyst thereof being people's laziness. Offline, it still exists.
  • anticrymactic 10mo ago
    How so? Since when is slop-producing ad-machine social media the only access to speech, press and association?
    • quailfarmer 10mo ago
      Since about 10 years ago, online platforms are a major part of how many people speak, publish, and associate.
    • dmix 10mo ago
      The only way to enforce it is basically a very dangerous game and will normalize gov control of the internet down to the individual level.
    • akersten 10mo ago
      > since when is speech I don't like speech?!
  • TimByte 10mo ago
    The real danger isn't the ban itself... it's the precedent that could be built on top of it if governments decide they like controlling digital participation
    • burnt-resistor 10mo ago
      Texas SB2420 requires age verification to download apps. Now, both the government and corporations have a new lever to identify exactly who you are, where you are, what you're doing, and can selectively cut you off from everything. Government-endorsed technofeudalism with inverted totalitarian features normalizing deviancy to become shameless, traditional totalitarianism. -> Scenario Want to use cash for lunch or parking? Sorry, no, you must be banked, and have an app. Want to use a bank? You must use an app. How do you get an app? You must have a phone and an ID. Want to buy a phone? Whoops, conundrum encountered. (And don't even think of wanting to get an ID.) -> In summary This further disenfranchises the extremely poor, and takes power and freedom away from everyone who isn't a billionaire.
• anthem2025 10mo ago
  [dead]
• hollow-moe 10mo ago
  Nice! Soon enough they'll be forbidden to be outside during the day too, to avoid taking any risk crossing these "adults" thing probably.
  • youngNed 10mo ago
    And cigarettes! What next booze!? Libertarianism really does hit a wall when it comes to kids, in so many ways, doesn't it?
    • dizlexic 10mo ago
      Not really, we just say the parents are more attuned to their child then the national government. I love the dystopian argument that without age laws parents would be out buying cigarettes and booze.
  • didibus 10mo ago
    Curfew laws are quite common aren't they?
  • random9749832 10mo ago
    Because so many children are going outside instead of wasting their life on TikTok Twitch etc. The amount of human hours spent watching others play video games / gamble / creating parasocial relationships: https://twitchtracker.com/statistics/watch-time https://twitchtracker.com/statistics/watch-time
• winddude 10mo ago
  I kind of get it, except youtube... which has much more educational, news, and long form content. Also also forcing face/age verification sounds ripe with issues.
  • burningChrome 10mo ago
    FYI the article is from back in December of this year and there's already been articles about teen circumventing the process of verification: https://www.wionews.com/trending/australian-teens-defy-under-16-social-media-bans-by-using-dog-pictures-so-how-safe-are-they-1765354324465 https://www.wionews.com/trending/australian-teens-defy-under...
  • lm28469 10mo ago
    It has some educational content, most of it is brain rot like everywhere else though. Open a brand new youtube account and check out what's being pushed by default, you either get room temperature IQ political analysts or "shorts" with softcore porn thumbnails to bait people for a click
    • eimrine 10mo ago
      Open a new YT account then feed it with [1] for few hours at least then you will unleash the full power of Youtube... unless you missclick even once into some popular blog typically they very clearly aimed at low-IQ people which accidentably might be your kid or somebody else like you know who I mean. But to prevent that slippery slope at least partly, just increase the feeding time of your YT account with the best requests possible which are carefully stacked at [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=youtube.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=youtube.com
      • lm28469 10mo ago
        Sure, but then again that's not how most people use youtube in real life. You can trick it into temporarily not being a slop provider but it's a constant battle, and not one a 10-15 years old will engage in, which is to be expected, kids are kids and can't fight multi billion dollar companies hiring the top behavioural scientist of our era to create the most addictive ad delivery mechanism possible
• TimByte 10mo ago
  This feels like one of those policies that sounds great at a podium but is going to age horribly
• jl6 10mo ago
  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?
  • lonelyasacloud 10mo ago
    Not sure it matters. It's a relatively uncontroversial ban, with public support in Aus because of mental health concerns, and key social media sites complying. VPN's come with their own minimum age 18 T&C's. As do the credit and debit that are usually required somewhere along the line to pay for the services. Historically, if it's awkward to circumvent most people tend to comply; which means in turn that minority that can figure out a way around it are unlikely to find many of their friends present. While for majority there's unlikely to be much of a draw or peer group pressure to circumvent. I'm sure Aus gov will monitor, media will highlight problems etc, but would be surprised if it was not actually quit effective.
  • barbazoo 10mo ago
    It's not ID based so why would they need fake ID?
  • steve_taylor 10mo ago
    It doesn't have to be that effective. The point was to get the law passed. Now that it's in effect, there will be iterative steps to make it effective. I think it will eventually lead to all social media users in Australia having to authenticate with their Digital ID, which will be made available to private sector integrators in the 2nd half of 2026.
• paxys 10mo ago
  Putting "teens" in the title is misleading. The ban is for ages 15 and below.
  • jfindper 10mo ago
    Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. It's half of the "teens" someone experiences before hitting the age of majority. I think it's fine to say "teen" in the title.
    • deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
    • Aachen 10mo ago
      TIL English teenager isn't necessarily the translation of Dutch tiener. Wikipedia at least says 10–19 for us and 13–19 for English. In German the word teenager is also used and the page gives both definitions on the same page without realising it's self-contradictory Idk that anyone takes this so literally (as that you're only a teenager if your cardinal age ends in the literal word teen and so twelve is definitely not a teenager), I've always understood it as "in their tens" but that may be my origin
      • jfindper 10mo ago
        Where I am, "teens" is 13-19 because they are all suffixed with "teen". Ten, eleven, and twelve are generally called "pre-teens", if anything.
        • Aachen 10mo ago
          Not very useful without saying where that would be :P
          • jfindper 10mo ago
            Well, it's useful for explaining my first comment, at least. But North America, for the curious.
• trinsic2 10mo ago
  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.
• renewiltord 10mo ago
  Now, all we have to do is mandate that you pass a psychiatric test in order to use social media or LLMs. In this way, we can protect the mentally disabled. People are killing themselves after going on sites like Reddit. It's too dangerous to the mentally disabled.
• ipaddr 10mo ago
  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.
  • onion2k 10mo ago
    Kids will learn how to overcome the ban. VPNs will become the standard. This gives governments an excuse to ban VPNs in the name of 'thinking of the children'. That might be the point though.
    • Wojtkie 10mo ago
      Historically consumer access to security/privacy tools has always been something the govt has wanted to restrict or prevent entirely.
    • jMyles 10mo ago
      > This gives governments an excuse to ban VPNs in the name of 'thinking of the children'. That might be the point though. ...then the rest of the world will see what the people of China and Russia already know: bans on VPNs cause them to explode in popularity and development pace. There's a reason that the most sophisticated VPNs and tunneling tech are built to evade the GFW. I recently visited a remote part of Siberia, and I was amazed at the ubiquity of VPNs. Grandmothers who grew up in shamanic traditions knew how to get around apparent traffic shaping (even on youtube!) to listen to their traditional music. It was quite inspiring. I'm not saying bans are a good idea - I'd much rather the adults in the room read the writing on the wall and bring about peaceful dismantling of legacy states in favor of a censorship-resistant internet. But it is coming either way.
      • zoobab 10mo ago
• burnt-resistor 10mo ago
  Starting Jan 1, 2026, Texas SB2420 is also requiring ID verification for all app stores. It's not about "think of the children", it's lazy parents who chose unAmerican totalitarianism and billionaires weaponizing government to eliminate privacy and make data brokers rich. https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=btkirlj8 https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=btkirlj8
• chrismorgan 10mo ago
  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.
  • stackskipton 10mo ago
    If you gave them an email address, it's possible they were able to verify you with 3rd party data brokers without your knowledge.
  • Elfener 10mo ago
    > I wonder if allowing browsing without an account is compliant with the letter or the spirit of the law Haven't read the law, but I don't think they considered this, since the most popular social media sites make it very hard or impossible to browse without an account. I guess with adult content bans they do consider this, since people don't tend to make an account there. And a very similar fun fact: You can't browse facebook marketplace if you're logged into an under 18 account, but can without an account (at least here in Hungary). Somehow, things are going to work better when you're not logged in...
• didibus 10mo ago
  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?
  • nwhnwh 10mo ago
    Communication over a distance between people who don't know each other or one that doesn't have pre-approved format for it, like customer service... is a disaster in general.
  • Cyclone_ 10mo ago
    It looks like for now the ban is just limited to 10 apps. There's quite a few which are arguably worse that received an exception.
  • Elfener 10mo ago
    > YouTubed simply deactivated their social features? No comments Youtube already decides to mark some videos as "for kids" which disables a quite a few features such as comments (I guess that makes sense), the ability to add the video to a playlist (what???), notifications (why???)
    • deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
  • matsemann 10mo ago
    Had the same thought. Growing up in a small town (couple of hundred inhabitants), internet access early 2000's was a gift for teenage me. I joined web forums and discovered new interests (=web development which lead to my career), chatted with friends on msn, later played runescape and wow and met friends I later traveled countries to meet. Of course, these things were different than the beasts today. Everything was more personal, smaller. No algorithms. So not sure what I feel. Social media as we know it today is obviously bad (not just for teenagers). But maybe I'm just nostalgic for how it was. But what about hn?
• BurningFrog 10mo ago
  I'll take on the low status role of not knowing if this is a good idea. I've seen the data showing teen sanity nose diving concurrently with social media penetration. I'm also a borderline kook libertarian. So I appreciate the arguments in both directions, and I think the only way to find out if it works is to try it out. Preferably on a remote isolated island without nuclear weapons, in case things go badly :)
• ethin 10mo ago
  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.
• whimsicalism 10mo ago
  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.
• feb012025 10mo ago
  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
  • whimsicalism 10mo ago
    Scrollable video is killing the Dems in general, not just because of Israel. It's like all the worst of local news crime reporting on steroids.
    • feb012025 10mo ago
      Each party is splitting into factions. I imagine the establishment of both parties think social media is a problem
      • whimsicalism 10mo ago
        Maybe. I think it's overall a rightward shift, only in urban cores is it accelerating a leftward shift. To the extent that it is motivating marginal voters to vote (which I think it is), it is also benefitting the right. It's also breaking down ethnic voting patterns in a way that benefits the right, I think.
        • pessimizer 10mo ago
          It is not motivating marginal voters to vote. The choice is between two nearly identical establishment candidates from two private clubs. The electorate is going the same way it's going in Europe, except in Europe other parties are legal (although marginalized through parliamentary methods.) In the UK, for example, Reform has been consistently polling the same as the Conservatives and Labour added together., and all three of those added together only represent 2/3 of the electorate. In the US, that translates to 2/3 of people becoming non-voters. Why that might look like a rightward shift in the US is because the Republicans don't fix their primaries (since the 90s), and their voters actually have an effect on who gets picked to run. Why it won't actually be a rightward shift is because Republicans ignore their platforms after being elected, and don't mind getting thrown out at the end of a term or two to work at the businesses they helped while in office. Democrats simply don't believe in any sort of democracy anymore. They invest all their effort into yelling at black people and Hispanics, and raising as much money as they can from the worst people in the world. The rest of the time they spend attacking anybody running to the left of them as racist or Russian, while their media outlets simply ignore those people other than when they're helping promote the slander. That's whats pushing away "ethnic voting." As a black person, I know when the voting season is here because I see a bunch of paid Democrats running around calling black people who criticize their party ethnic slurs and using the word "massa" a lot. Republicans don't do that. They don't rely on black people so just ignore us. Democrats rely on us, but will never do anything for us, so they use terror.
• DustinBrett 10mo ago
  Future generation of hackers.
• macic 10mo ago
  Just what we need, even more government censorship.
• amatecha 10mo ago
  Saw a screenshot last night of someone who can't get into JIRA (or some other Atlassian product) until they either submit two forms of government ID or record a face scan. Seems like a great and effective initiative /s Text of the screen: "Your Atlassian account is not age verified. Laws in your country require us to verify your age before accessing some products, including Jira and Confluence. This process takes 5-10 minutes. This can be done using two pieces of government ID or by performing a face scan."
  • systemtest 10mo ago
    Sounds like a great excuse to not have to partake in office BS.
  • plantain 10mo ago
    No Atlassian products are included in the ban. I think you have seen a joke.
    • amatecha 10mo ago
      Yeah turns out that is the case, it was a joke image but the person didn't say it was a joke and posted it as if it was real :\
      • jackvalentine 10mo ago
        Welcome to the internet!
      • fpauser 10mo ago
        Social media ...
  • nrhrjrjrjtntbt 10mo ago
    You can view your own tickets but the scrum board and comment sections dont work.
• thisisauserid 10mo ago
  Been seeing ads all over NYC for a teen edition of Instagram.
• ajsnigrutin 10mo ago
  Age verification, digital IDs and no more anonimity... coming soon to your country too!
  • jaimex2 10mo ago
    Fake Ids and undergrounds sites coming right after.
• deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
• artur44 10mo ago
  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.
  • gen6acd60af 10mo ago
    Please don't do this here. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=generated%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46208058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46208058
    • taejavu 10mo ago
      What, because they used a single em—dash?
    • artur44 10mo ago
      Got it, thanks for pointing it out.
• miroljub 10mo ago
  The only appropriate comment here would be invoking Goodwin Law. Everything else is too mild to describe the journey of former democracies to totalitarian regimes.
  • oersted 10mo ago
    Let's not go overboard. While I don't agree with this law, it's not much different from other underage laws that are commonplace: alcohol, tobacco, driving... I don't think it's an indicator of totalitarianism, it's just the same-old lawmaking philosophy updating to new developments.
    • themk 10mo ago
      My personal favourite analogy is gambling. The constant microdosing of dopamine to get you to hang around and spend just a little more ~money~ attention.
    • protocolture 10mo ago
      It has to be read in sequence with other changes in Australia. The government has been working tirelessly for more than a decade to prevent growing dissent from sweeping the major parties from power. The government has wrapped itself in the dual flags of nationalism and protecting kids to shield themselves from an enormous volume of rational criticism on this topic. Changing a law, in and of itself, isnt worrying. Its that minor parties these kids could have supported are facing a triple whammy, kids will be less likely to engage with them online, they have a steeper threshold to pass when accessing the senate, and they have had a large funding changes that disadvantage them. Godwinning is perfectly appropriate imho.
    • miroljub 10mo ago
      It's not about underage protection. It's about requiring an ID from adults and keeping information about their identity while using social media. But, I suppose you don't care because you don't have something to hide, don't you :)
• nexawave-ai 10mo ago
  All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.
• wnevets 10mo ago
  The aussies are huge fans of big brother
  • themk 10mo ago
    I thought Meta was "the Party".
• rpmisms 10mo ago
  Discord and Roblox exempted. This is a joke.
  • robryan 10mo ago
    To include discord you have to extend it to messaging services. To include Roblox it should be all online games with chat.
    • deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
    • morshu9001 10mo ago
      When I was a kid, online games with chat were a no-no. Most of the ones designed for kids specifically avoided having a chat feature aside from preset phrases, like Toon Town. Then of course by teens, most boys were in the notorious MW2 lobbies.
    • rpmisms 10mo ago
      Ok that's fine. These two platforms are where kids are being groomed.
  • Joel_Mckay 10mo ago
    Absolutely, Roblox should not exist given the problems it caused. Goes well beyond scamming kids to work for scrip. =3
    • daedrdev 10mo ago
      Despite how little they pay their game devs, offering like 20% I think, Roblox itself continues to make a loss so there case that they are scamming their devlopers isn't the strongest
      • poly2it 10mo ago
        Roblox is making a loss? How is this possible? I've always thought it was perfectly maximined.
• hedayet 10mo ago
  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.
• flipbrad 10mo ago
  Hacker News is social media, isn't it?
• ares623 10mo ago
  I don’t know why they don’t just ban or restrict the hardware. It’ll be easier to enforce.
• stackedinserter 10mo ago
  So Australian teens will finally learn how they computers and home wifi works.
  • jaimex2 10mo ago
    That is one positive!
• hermannj314 10mo ago
  Ban kids, implement identity verification checks, remove ban on kids, keep identity verification checks.
  • barbazoo 10mo ago
    > Ban kids yep, done > implement identity verification checks nope, not done so what's your point?
    • morshu9001 10mo ago
      How are kids banned without an ID check?
      • barbazoo 10mo ago
        Check out the article.
        • morshu9001 10mo ago
          Oh, I was reading it and stopped at a full-page ad I thought was the end. Looking again, it goes on to mention enforcement, but it's still vague.
      • hermannj314 10mo ago
        >>> Companies have told Canberra they will deploy a mix of age inference - estimating a user's age from their behaviour - and age estimation based on a selfie, alongside checks that could include uploaded identification documents. An algorithmic bouncer guesses your age and if he isn't happy you have to feed him proof until he is happy.
        • morshu9001 10mo ago
          That sounds like ID is going to be required, at least eventually. Either that or kids are not actually banned.
    • 10mo ago
• jjcm 10mo ago
  I've said this before, but if countries want to mandate compliance, they should be required to provide the mechanism for compliance. The rollout of this has been pretty rough all things considered, much of it because the mechanism for compliance is flawed. Anthony Albanese's latest instgram posts are full of comments from teens saying things like, "how am i still on instagram if you banned us". The primary reason for this is most providers are leveraging age-estimation techniques, because the law specifically states: > 63DB Use of certain identification material and services > (1) A provider of an age-restricted social media platform must not: > (a) collect government-issued identification material In an effort to prevent identity theft, the bill as originally written(1) was updated(2) to forbid platforms from collecting government IDs as a proof of age. Even if you support the intent of the bill, the design-by-committee approach made the requirements so easy to circumvent that it's effectively security theater. (1) Original bill: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bills/r7284_first-reps/toc_pdf/24150b01.PDF;fileType=application%2Fpdf#search=%22legislation/bills/r7284_first-reps/0000%22 https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bi... (2) Bill that passed after rewrites: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bills/r7284_aspassed/toc_pdf/24150b01.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf#search=%22legislation/bills/r7284_aspassed/0000%22 https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bi...
  • daedrdev 10mo ago
    So how does someone locked out wrongfully prove their age? Some people just look kinda young
    • jimmydorry 10mo ago
      The platforms all seem to have a fallback "support a ticket with your government ID, and we pinky promise to delete the ID after verifying you".
      • daedrdev 10mo ago
        But thats what this law does not allow according to the head of this chain, specifically government ids are not allowed to prove age, even if you delete them unless I read it wrong
• gloosx 10mo ago
  "It's just kind of pointless, we're just going to create new ways to get on these platforms, so what's the point," said 14-year-old Claire Ni. Claire Ni concluded it best. They are just going to find new ways. Imagine a kid stopping using something because of the law or government ban. Those lawmakers are just delusional if they think they can pass a law and the kids will stop using social media.
  • morshu9001 10mo ago
    If it has no effect, why complain?
  • stevage 10mo ago
    It can still be worth making a law even if some people find a way around it. Some teens will stop using social media as a result. That's enough.
  • theshackleford 10mo ago
    That’s like saying we should let children smoke because as a fifteen year old I was able to acquire cigarettes. I might have taken up smoking (to be fair I took it up when homeless from being around older homeless people who smoked) but a large cohort of my generation didn’t.
• guyomes 10mo ago
  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 https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/articles/clyd1dvrll1o [2] https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/1350409 https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/1350409 [3] https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/16109150 https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/16109150
• Californiasober 10mo ago
  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.
• tonyhart7 10mo ago
  how Corporate/Gov knows who is Teen on these account???? isn't this is just precursor to digital ID ?????
• ianbutler 10mo ago
  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.
• dkobia 10mo ago
  I have kids and I like this but as we know, prohibition only makes the drink stronger and the thirst deeper.
• duxup 10mo ago
  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.
  • SunshineTheCat 10mo ago
    This is a pretty common cycle. Government steps in to "fix" a "problem" and then: Solve nothing. Create problems with their "solutions." Implore the populous to reelect them to fix all the problems. Rince. Repeat.
  • rajamaka 10mo ago
    Exactly, this policy is from a government that taxed tobacco products so much that cigarettes are now cheaper than they have ever been in ~15 years because the black market stepped in and have nearly completely taken over the market.
• notnullorvoid 10mo ago
  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.
• deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
• deleted 10mo ago
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• SunshineTheCat 10mo ago
  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.
  • singpolyma3 10mo ago
    If it's bad for teens it's bad for everyone. Banning for only teens makes little sense
  • bloppe 10mo ago
    I agree with you when I believe a choice can be freely made. But peer pressure as a child is extremely intense, and if you're the one weirdo you know whose parents don't allow them on Snapchat, it can cause lots of strife and probably be ineffective anyway.
    • SunshineTheCat 10mo ago
      So I'm assuming weed laws have put an end to the "peer pressure" of teens getting other teens to smoke it? Life always comes down to personal choices and it's always the hard ones that are the most important. No law will ever change that.
      • morshu9001 10mo ago
        Not saying that laws are the reason, but there isn't much childhood peer pressure to smoke weed. There is peer pressure around iMessage in some countries just cause of Apple, rather than kids finding the obvious workarounds.
• fortran77 10mo ago
  While I'm not sure about this ban, _something_ is causing normally nice, peaceful Australia to be somewhere I don't feel safe anymore. My relatives in Melbourne have left, after being physically attacked and had their property vandalized by mostly young "activist" types who, no doubt, get all their news from social media.
• jgilias 10mo ago
  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.
  • PunchyHamster 10mo ago
    It's wet dream of politicians that think the key to reducing crime is invigilation. So, that goal I don't think there is all that many politicians gullible enough to think that kind of massive breach of privacy is a worthy tradeoff
  • denkmoon 10mo ago
    Nobody is forcing you to use facebook
    • wiredpancake 10mo ago
      You're right, but Social Media was one of the last places one could be critical of the Government whilst also being anonymous or pesudo-anonymous.
  • denismi 10mo ago
    So far I haven't been KYCd by anything. Aside from YouTube I don't particularly engage with any of these often, but my Google, Facebook, Discord, Twitter, Bluesky, (current) Reddit, Slack, Telegram accounts all seem to be BAU without new requirements. If the 80% of us currently holding unambiguously-over-16 accounts are exempt, and it only affects future over-16 users as they're onboarded, then it is a very blunt and very slow form of data harvesting which won't yield useful results until years/decades after all of the relevant decision-makers have moved on, retired and/or died. So this seems unlikely?
• zmmmmm 10mo ago
  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.
  • deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  • spullara 10mo ago
    very few laws and law makers take into consideration secondary (and beyond) effects.
  • ruthie_cohen 10mo ago
    [dead]
  • downsocialmedia 10mo ago
    b) This was always the case in past too, but I think this is handleable. But most importantly, there's no expectation of kid to be on social media anymore, which is much more important than whether they are actually there or not.
  • basisword 10mo ago
    Curious about your thoughts on (a). I understand privacy concerns but not your point about scams. How are people going to lose their life savings? A photo ID is useful because you can compare the photo on it to someone human. Passports contain mirochips. If losing your ID was so dangerous people would be in trouble all the time, because people lose them all the time.
• indymike 10mo ago
  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.
  • gertlex 10mo ago
    Am I wrong in feeling like the solution you outline is only applicable to an individual's kids? But at the societal level, it clearly seems we can't depend on enough parents to do what you talk about. Something else is needed. I don't have answers to give. Certainly not a fan of the government approach of "everyone must prove their age online now", which I believe is how the AU law is done. (casual listening to Security Now podcast about this for a long while now)
    • 10mo ago
• skwee357 10mo ago
  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".
  • multiplegeorges 10mo ago
    There is nothing that social media provides that a private group chat with your closest people doesn't fulfill. It could be banned with nothing of value lost.
    • jonwinstanley 10mo ago
      The whole world seems to be hooked on TikTok, reels and shorts for entertainment. Reversing that would take some doing.
      • morgengold 10mo ago
        There will definitely be hellish withdrawal symptoms.
      • bluerooibos 10mo ago
        It's quite dystopian. Seeing people in your family, and friends, just mindlessly consume that shit, for hours upon hours - and many of them are completely oblivious to the fact that these reels and shorts are engineered to keep them engaged. Using ML/Data to keep people hooked on content - I'd be embarrassed to be an engineer at any of these companies actively destroying our society.
• reassess_blind 10mo ago
  Discord isn’t banned, but Twitch is? Interesting. Surely Discord harbours more bullying than Twitch (where image sharing isn’t even a feature).
• 0x_rs 10mo ago
  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.
• rarisma 10mo ago
  now do the rest of the world
• aussieguy1234 10mo ago
  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.
• 1vuio0pswjnm7 10mo ago
  Alternative to archive.md, archive.ph Text-only: https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1S3fVC/ https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1S3fVC... https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1S2nVb/ https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1S2nVb... echo url=https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/world/asia/australia-social-media-ban-under-16.html \ |curl -K/dev/stdin -Agooglebot > 1.htm firefox ./1.htm links -dump 1.htm|sed -n '/Effect/,/region./p' More https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1S5G8h/ https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1S5G8h... https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1S5sYp/ https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1S5sYp...
  • philipwhiuk 10mo ago
    Your script broke. echo url=https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/world/asia/australia-social-media-ban-under-16.html \ |curl -K/dev/stdin -Agooglebot > 1.htm firefox ./1.htm links -dump 1.htm|sed -n '/Effect/,/region./p'
  • deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
• roguecoder 10mo ago
  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.
• morgengold 10mo ago
  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.
• notepad0x90 10mo ago
  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.
• justatdotin 10mo ago
  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 :)
• nish__ 10mo ago
  I support it.
• deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
• macleginn 10mo ago
  Makes one wonder if/how quickly they will come for closed WhatsApp groups and Telegram channels next.
• Nevermark 10mo ago
  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.
  • akersten 10mo ago
    > 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. Incredibly, you were able to do that without the government's help! I suppose people just aren't built the same these days, so we need laws instead of letting people decide on their own.
    • Nevermark 10mo ago
      Without commenting specifically on Australia's approach, I think it does make sense to have some laws for children. But I would prefer that surveillance-manipulation based practices be made illegal first. That would remove a lot of the means, and a lot of profits, from manipulating people via feeds, warped searches, and a host of other ways and uses for digging into, and leveraging, people's idiosyncrasies and vulnerabilities against them. Dossier's on children, resulting in manipulative feeds for them are bad. But it is a bad practice for everyone. One of those deceptive business practices, that gets claimed to be not deceptive, because the deception is "out in the open". Fraud doesn't have an "everyone is doing it" defense. Neither should surveillance-manipulation practices. It isn't just a case of individuals, who need to be "saved from themselves". Our society, as permeated with surveillance and manipulation, has become permeated with "personalized" media driven dysfunction. We all have to put up with the bullshit it creates, and divisiveness it magnifies. Dystopian. AI slop would be less effective, and less promoted, if there wasn't a surveillance dossier to customize who saw what. People don't like it now. Getting non-"personalized" slop? That would create exactly the intense pushback that is needed. -- My ad free life, and ad-funded media free life, has left me utterly disgusted with manipulative social media. When people mount a defense of keeping it legal, it makes me very sad for their quite visibly slowly boiling brains. The practices are clearly both highly unethical and toxic. (I am all for social media as a service/resource. I don't even mind ads (too much), when they are placed to match content, not the consumer. Just not when both are irreversibly compromised by massive tech scaled conflicts of interest.)
• timoth3y 10mo ago
  I think if we are going to ban people under 16 from social media, we should also ban people over 70 from social media. At least as much mental and societal damage is done by elderly falling for bigoted, scammy, manipulative nonsense online than by teenagers having their self-esteem lowered. As recent holiday gatherings have shown us, the young handle social media far better then the elderly. /s
• delis-thumbs-7e 10mo ago
  So-called social media is proven to be just a huge scam operation and manipulation mechanism for the ultra-rich robber barons at Silicon Valley. Denying it from kids is same as denying tobacco or alcohol companies sell amd advertise to them. Hopefully future generations have spend their childhood reading, studying and socialising with other kids, not living fake lives and being hunted by slimy adult men. Hopefully they take a one look at this shot and go ”nope, not for me” and do something with their lives. Good for you Australia. I hope EU follows suit soon.
• cjpartridge 10mo ago
  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.
• shirro 10mo ago
  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.
• poplarsol 10mo ago
  Every concern about "teens" is explicitly mirrored by a concern about low-capacity adults, which is why Australia et al are so concerned about "disinformation" and the need to control speech of all kinds. This effort should be seen in that light.
• SpaceManNabs 10mo ago
  Anything done "for the kids" is always a scam. When you get asked to use KYC to get on hacker news, just remember you fell for it if you supported this.
• steve_taylor 10mo ago
  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-search-engines/105516256 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-11/age-verification-sear...
  • osculum 10mo ago
    That's your reading of the situation, and far from logical to everyone else.
• gverrilla 10mo ago
  Full support.
• ropable 10mo ago
  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.
  • akersten 10mo ago
    So, you haven't identified any actual problems with them being on social media though. For example, were this lament that parenting is hard written 50 years ago: > 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 introduced to Rock n' Roll. We tried to be reasonably conservative in their introduction to music and lyrics, 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 Rock n' Roll, which increased the social pressure (and corresponding social exclusion) to be dealing with vinyl. Not having access to The Stones, AC/DC, etc. at that point meant that they were effectively out-group, which is a Big Deal for a teenager. > We ended up allowing them a radio 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'm being a bit facetious here but my point is that everyone who is in support of this kind of Parenting-as-a-Service is not identifying any real issue the government should concern itself with. Just that kids are doing something new and sometimes scary and gosh it's just hard being a parent when they don't listen.
• gus_massa 10mo ago
  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.
• kledru 10mo ago
  unlike me, these young people might even be able to travel to the United States one day...
• macinjosh 10mo ago
  Wake me up, when September ends.
• Bad_Initialism 10mo ago
  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.
  • presentation 10mo ago
    I disagree. It’s easy to say this from your armchair, but when your kid is the one kid not on social media because you’re such an righteous parent, and that kid is getting bullied by all the other kids for not knowing what’s going on in TikTok or Insta, you start seeing this as a problem that requires the coordination of large numbers of people who you may or may not know, many of whom are kids who lack executive function. If you just disdain children in general, you can go ahead and say that instead.
    • brikym 10mo ago
      Agreed. Individualists don't understand how people actually don't have much free will and decisions are mostly influenced by culture. Having an anything goes culture is a massive head wind.
      • energy123 10mo ago
        > influenced by culture And by prisoner's dilemma / double bind type phenomenon, such as being forced to choose between being a social outcast, or to be on social media. That double bind would not exist if you nuke the whole thing. The libertarian theory of the world does not have such phenomenon within its descriptive aperture.
    • rjdj377dhabsn 10mo ago
      Maybe you should move to a community that shares your values rather than getting the state to impose those values on everyone.
      • presentation 10mo ago
• kybernetikos 10mo ago
  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.
• beached_whale 10mo ago
  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.
  • whywhywhywhy 10mo ago
    The age check push isn’t about checking ages it’s about linking IRL identity to account.
    • beached_whale 10mo ago
      Yes and no, it depends. But that the standards/services don't exist is more an issue as it prevents doing it correctly and safely. Most websites that will/already need to verify someones age are not capable of doing so safely.
      • whywhywhywhy 10mo ago
        Yes and yes, look at the rollout, within weeks it's got through in multiple countries across continents. There is nothing organic about this, it's being pushed and bribed into existence.
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 10mo ago
  It will be interesting to see how this pans out. I think many in tech are afraid that this will lead to a positive outcome.
  • squigz 10mo ago
    I'm afraid that this will lead to no change to the issues it purports to fix, and then we'll... do nothing with that information.
  • mrweasel 10mo ago
    Really, I think most people in tech generally believe that getting teens of social media will be a positive thing. The question is how to go about it. It's understandable, to some extend, that people will protest government interference, but it's also an industry that have repeatedly show itself to be incapable of regulation itself. I don't really see the big surprise, most government are relatively hands of, until you prove that you're incapable of regulating yourself. Most regulation happens after the damage is done. I do think that 16 is a bit low, I'd like to have seen it be 18, or a complete ban on algorithmically generated feeds (I believe the latter would be the better option).
• koopuluri 10mo ago
  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.
• stevefan1999 10mo ago
  That wasn't world first, the world first is China
• jaimex2 10mo ago
  HackerNews used to be full of moderately smart people. This is basically Reddit level comments. Think for a moment instead of just accepting whatever the media is telling you to think. How many social networks are there? Are some of those decentralised? Will kids move to unmoderated underground ones in response to this? Will the government expand these laws now that it achieved a foothold? Parenting and teaching your kids to think and understand how the world works is how you really solve the problems. Not building weak fences and encouraging government over-reach. Raising and guiding your kids is YOUR responsibility, not the governments. All this came about because some absolute slog of a parent had their kid kill themselves and blamed social media. Where the hell was he while their kid struggled?!
  • yunnpp 10mo ago
    Obviously you have no kids or live in a remote cabin isolated from society. Banning social media in principle is like banning the sales of alcohol and other drugs to underage people. Those bans are good for society irrespective of your parenting ability. It helps that those negative things are less accessible to the vulnerable. Now, how the social media ban is effected in practice is a different point. And people here are rightfully skeptical of ID verification and such things, since that opens the door for way more surveillance outside social media.
    • jaimex2 10mo ago
      I do have kids and they are well adjusted individuals. I spent time parenting them and showing them how the world works. Turns out the social media drug loses all it's power if you reveal whats behind the curtain. Just like real drugs, dont be scared to show your kids what the consequences are. I wasn't aware that banning alchohol and drugs to minors had any positive effect tbh. If anything that in itself made them more desirable and sought after.
• CommenterPerson 10mo ago
  Yay for the Aussie government. Hope the sociopath tech bros take notice and clean up their toxic products. And the little tech bros protesting here. The Aussies passed strict gun control laws in 1996 .. suicides and homicides decreased significantly. Another field where we Leaders of the Free world (or not) can learn from the "World down under"!
• tjpnz 10mo ago
  This is what happens when there's a lack of robust options for parents to deal with the issue themselves. As a technical person I can prevent my kids from accessing these apps on any of their devices, regardless of whether they're at home or not. But if you're a parent who is not you're pretty much limited to the flawed offerings from Apple and Google, who are financially incentivized to make it as hard and as full of holes as possible.
• reassess_blind 10mo ago
  I’m concerned this will drive teens to dodgy apps and services that have lax data security and no oversight.
• WhyNotHugo 10mo ago
  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?
  • brailsafe 10mo ago
    > Does this new ban move kids to using email to keep in touch with friends and family? You had social media but no ability to send DMs? In an attempt to not deliberately misinterpret you, next to zero of my current ability to keep in touch with anyone in my life via the internet, distant or otherwise, depends on social media, so forgive me if this seems like a strange take. Kids need access to YouTube in order to talk to their family? > Are they now completely isolated from the rest of the world? It's only in extremely recent history that anyone, especially kids, had access to the rest of the world in any meaningful way, or at the resolution available now. I don't think it's remotely healthy for adults to concern themselves with the hourly regional issues wherever they're occuring in the world; it costs society a great deal more than it earns imo (but it's very profitable for the companies on this list)
    • WhyNotHugo 10mo ago
      > In an attempt to not deliberately misinterpret you, […] Kids need access to YouTube in order to talk to their family? Your attempt has failed; obviously I’m not taking about YouTube, but about things like WhatsApp, Telegram, WeChat, Instagram, and other social media which families actually use to talk to each other on a dialy basis. Perhaps you don’t use these, but most of the world population uses some of these (or something similar) to keep in touch with family and friends. Heck, even when I was a teen (before smartphones) I kept in touch with friends over social media. We’d even organise meeting up through it.
      • BlueTemplar 10mo ago
        Out of all of those, only Instagram is on the list (or I have heard has complied despite not being on it). You seem to be confusing messaging software and social media ? Do (the others than Instagram) have an algorithmic feed, or (effectively) do not work without making an account ? I guess that there's also Discord (that isn't on the list but has still complied) that is in an awkward in-between ? (IMHO both Instagram and Discord ought to be banned anyway, for everyone, because they're deep web platforms that are owned by Meta/Tencent, and are therefore a threat to the open web and liberal democracy.)
• gorgoiler 10mo ago
  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.
  • sothatsit 10mo ago
    We already have digital IDs in Australia, and it seems like a natural fit for this. The digital ID doesn't need to share much information with social media companies, it just needs to confirm your age. And then we don't need new 3rd-parties holding our personal information. Also yes, voting is mandatory in Australia. You get a small fine if you don't vote.
    • ulrashida 10mo ago
      It's a very good system. $20 is the right number to get you off the couch, but not so much as to cripple you. There are exceptions if you have a valid reason for not voting. The maximum fine is ~$180 so you can't simply ignore the Elections Commission and hope it goes away.
  • triceratops 10mo ago
    Another proposal to achieve anonymity, similar to yours: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46223051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46223051
• nromiun 10mo ago
  Everyone supporting this in the comments deserves to live under CCP style internet censorship.
• nntwozz 10mo ago
  Society is like poorly written software with lots of patches, new features are added (social media) and then stuff randomly breaks. A fix is eventually deployed, sometimes the fix works; sometimes the fix causes more bugs. And so we move forward, like Gordon Freeman in unforeseen consequences. Nobody said nothing as social media and the attention economy took over the world. "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” — Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park
• t1234s 10mo ago
  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?
  • Duwensatzaj 10mo ago
    Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, X, YouTube, Reddit, Twitch and Kick. GitHub is not included, nor is Discord.
• golemiprague 10mo ago
  [dead]
• Mikhail_Edoshin 10mo ago
  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.
• ballpug 10mo ago
  [dead]
• chocoboaus3 10mo ago
  Including youtube is where it became stupid, even teachers pushed back against that
• insane_dreamer 10mo ago
  I wonder how many of the people who are against it have young teens. It's easy to rail against the ban, or paint it as some plot to get everyone's IDs, when you're not personally affected by it. As a parent of young teens, I 100% support it.
• darubedarob 10mo ago
  [dead]
• waterTanuki 10mo ago
  I'm in favor of banning all social media for under 18s. I'm heavily against any form of mandatory form of identification for using non-government online-services. Is it even possible to do the former without doing the later?
• firefoxd 10mo ago
  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. [0]: https://idiallo.com/blog/your-id-online-and-offline https://idiallo.com/blog/your-id-online-and-offline
• eimrine 10mo ago
  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.
• yason 10mo ago
  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.
  • eimrine 10mo ago
    I am not protecting non-FOSS practices but you can not register on crypto cx by just showing some papers with not showing your fare. That answers the fake picture case.
• verisimi 10mo ago
  Is this dystopian enough yet?
  • random9749832 10mo ago
    Dystopian is hijacking your mind using recommendation algorithms.
• jdthedisciple 10mo ago
  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.
  • timbit42 10mo ago
    The ban isn't the worst part.
• rswail 10mo ago
  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.
• grahar64 10mo ago
  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
• mk89 10mo ago
  I like this article more: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyp9d3ddqyo 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.
• 256_ 10mo ago
  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-address-pedro-sanchez-prime-minister-spain/ 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.
  • rhubarbtree 10mo ago
    Well, no one is suggesting 24/7 surveillance, we’re suggesting banning children from using social media, as it has demonstrably very harmful effects on their education and wellbeing. It’s not Orwellian. If it were, then not allowing kids to vote or drink before they become adults would be Orwellian. We are simply banning kids from a harmful activity until they are old enough to decide for themselves. The ban has to be at a social level decided by the democratic process, because there’s a coordination problem here: it’s not a harm that can be remedied at the level of the individual. The real villains here are the social media companies that have profited from the misery and manipulation of children, to their ultimate harm. I find it hard to believe anyone would argue in good faith against this ban. In tech circles there are a lot of vested interests that don’t want other governments to protect the children in their countries from harmful products. Shame on them.
• metacortexx 10mo ago
  This is a good start to protect kids! Let's hope it helps families and makes the internet a better place for everyone.
• mentalgear 10mo ago
  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.
• wartywhoa23 10mo ago
  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.
  • _petronius 10mo ago
    Your sci-fi distopia flash fiction is compelling, but not actually on topic in this discussion. "Think of the children" is weaponized for censorious purposes, but also the harms of social media are well documented (unlike many of the other moral panics fuelled by this phrase). Communication channels are becoming managed spaces, but by private companies not accountable to the electorate, not by the state. I'm not sure a blanket under-16s ban on all social media is the right answer, but there are really good reasons why people support this that you need to engage with to have a useful discussion here.
    • wartywhoa23 10mo ago
      > Your sci-fi distopia > to have a useful discussion here Typical dismissive tactics of a devil's advocate; > by private companies not accountable to the electorate, not by the state This tale about corporations being separate entities from the state doesn't entertain anymore.
• niemandhier 10mo ago
  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.
• egorfine 10mo ago
  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.
  • gverrilla 10mo ago
    Send your children to Gaza.
    • egorfine 10mo ago
      Why?
• DeathArrow 10mo ago
  If they scare teens of Instagram the danger is some of them will go to places like 4Chan.
  • fxwin 10mo ago
    i assume 4chan would fall in the age restricted social media category
• fithisux 10mo ago
  It is exactly like smoking. They use age verification, instead of banning it. Because they are deeply involved. It is not about protecting. It never was.
• ljlolel 10mo ago
  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.
• _pdp_ 10mo ago
  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.
• pharrington 10mo ago
  Modern social media is worse for our mental health than cigarettes are for our physical health. This should be a no-brainer.
• fpauser 10mo ago
  This is a good thing!
• exasperaited 10mo ago
  Tech people imagining their own preferential boogeyman harms that might flow from any action intended to reduce the harms of their products. Again.
• skanteezxxy 10mo ago
  [dead]
• alexnewman 10mo ago
  My wife did a lot of conversations with kids in Australia. They all said they hate social media and regularly get harassed by Asian criminal gangs trying to blackmail them. They support the law cause they were only there cause they felt they had to be. We freed these children . The Australian internet is far more dangerous than the USA
• deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
• roschdal 10mo ago
  This is a brilliant idea!
• techterrier 10mo ago
  HN: social media is as bad as smoking AUS: we agree, and like smoking, won't be letting our kids do it NH: but freeze peach!
  • zulban 10mo ago
    HN is not one person.
• amitchandel07 10mo ago
  [dead]
• maqnius 10mo ago
  Regulating dark patterns and recommendation algorithms would benefit everyone. Banning social media until age 16 and then suddenly allowing teenagers into the toxic social media world feels half-baked and somewhat misses the point to me.
• quitit 10mo ago
  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.
• random9749832 10mo ago
  It feels like there is more bot activity then ever before. Reddit is now filled with fresh accounts, suspended accounts and bunch of content that suddenly gets deleted. It doesn't even feel like you are interacting with people anymore. The "social" part is severely decaying.
  • timbit42 10mo ago
    New accounts should be limited to read-only for at least a month.
• pfdietz 10mo ago
  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.
  • ulrashida 10mo ago
    I'm not sure if you've been following, but the current SCOTUS hasn't seemed to as concerned about upholding precedents as previous courts have.
• oddrationale 10mo ago
  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.
  • SoftTalker 10mo ago
    I don't use social media but from occasionally trying to look at a link someone has sent me, the experience of viewing these sites without being logged in is very limited. If you can see anything, it's maybe one post and then you get a popup demanding that you log in to see more or view the whole thread.
    • twiclo 10mo ago
      I think they'll loosen that for Australia after this.
  • miggol 10mo ago
    > But what actually being banned is accounts, not access. Is this implied, or is this detailed in the law? I can see why this would make sense. So many businesses just have a link to their facebook page as their business website, which you should still be able to view. And presuming platforms like YouTube fit the definition, banning kids from watching anything on there would be pretty rough. > 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. On the subject of YouTube, I wonder if they would allow for the creation of teen accounts, which restrict all social media functions but allow subscriptions. But would that then also remove algorithmic recommendations? What about data harvesting off those accounts? If so, I might have to look up how to get a teenage fake ID.
• ProllyInfamous 10mo ago
  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.
  • superxpro12 10mo ago
    It's interesting that, in almost every proposed solution, there is a degree of moderation involved. There simply is no way around it.
    • ProllyInfamous 10mo ago
      >there is a degree of moderation involved Life in moderation, even with tech. I've used an outbound-only landline, for going on two years; the previous two decades I always carried a work cell phone. It's incredible that even years later, if I happen to hear my former ringtone (used by other people), or hear that familiar `buzzing` sound: I still get anxious feeling like I must respond to these ficticious nobodies... The portability of the cell phone is IMHO what made it so addictive / disruptive. Back when most computers didn't fit into our pockets society had clearly delineated spaces between online/offline — now everything is connect so nothing is...
• lizknope 10mo ago
  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.
• fs_software 10mo ago
  I wonder how teens who already use social media will be affected compared with kids who won’t have accounts until age 16.
• shevy-java 10mo ago
  I don't like censorship. I also don't like antisocial media. Still, I dislike censorship more than that antisocial media.
• pookha 10mo ago
  This has nothing to do with protecting kids...This is the classic "OH WONT SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!" meme that governments fall back on to terrorize and coerce the herd. There's an obvious push by neo-liberals to implement a digital application (ID) that they can use to "authorize". What the UK and Australia and the US homeland security really want is the ability to see a troublemaker and to toggle a switch on their digital certificate\token to dissociate them from the internet. No doubt they've got legions of Keycloak systems stood up and ready.
• Havoc 10mo ago
  And the UK is pushing for age checks on VPNs https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/63901/documents/7465 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”).
  • MagicMoonlight 10mo ago
    That’s a list of random possible amendments which haven’t been agreed.
    • Havoc 10mo ago
      That's why I said "pushing for" not "enacted"...
• casey2 10mo ago
  I could have sworn china did something like this a decade ago, but sure World first LOL
  • deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
• realaaa 10mo ago
  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?
• chocoboaus3 10mo ago
  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
• mdnahas 10mo ago
  The banned websites have negatives, but they also have positives too. I hate to think of the young geeks banned from YouTube’s Kahn Academy, Veritasium, Smarter Everyday, …, and all the DIY tutorials.