6 ms·

Social media use on the rise among Australian under-16s after ban: data

chris_wot 2mo ago
LOL - I remember saying this would not be something that could be policed, and a bunch of my fellow countrymen tut-tutting at me saying things like “it’s the thought that counts”, etc. Now it’s gone underground and it’s worse than ever. Meantime, there are kids in high schools across the nation who can’t watch World War II documentaries on Youtube because that’s considered “restricted content”. You can’t make this shit up.
- grebc 2mo ago
  Best ban them at the DNS level if you want to get into it. And not by age. Edit: any rule/law has ways around it. It’s the intent of the law that matters, and I do not think the sentiment in the community that made it possible is worried about your LOL.
- bko 2mo ago
  The law basically said these companies have to have reasonable measures. They could make a dent if they actually required age verification. But people think it's some civil rights violation like you have some fundamental right to use social media. Also it's not underground. Kids aren't allowed to create accounts and just lie about their age. Below 13yo did that before as that's the min she already.
  - chris_wot 2mo ago
    So basically, you say it's all ineffective and can't be policed.
- alt227 2mo ago
  It isnt worse than ever. Read the article, usage is down overall since the ban.
bko 2mo ago
Misleading title. Usage dropped after the ban and has risen slightly since the initial drop. The article does very little besides report this. It speculates that it might be due to vpn or the ban not working. It doesn't even go into how the ban works or and basic journalistic follow up questions. Does anyone have a better source or info why it's not effective
- codebje 2mo ago
  Source: Australian, with teenager. 1. It's not a ban on using social media, it's a requirement for age verification to create an account. This only limits usage on the few platforms that force an account to do anything. 2. The technical controls platforms implement are, unsurprisingly, generally quite weak. Kids are crafty enough to circumvent them, and share how freely. 3. Wannabe-influencer parents just create accounts for their kids, making the circumvention trivial. 4. There are no consequences for using a social media account while under 16. I think the final point is the main one, though. By design there's no mechanism in place for the government to take any action if a kid gets onto social media, only if a platform fails to implement age checks that satisfy the legislation's criteria. So platforms all implemented tokenistic age checks. Platforms don't care, or need to care, if they get bypassed. The government doesn't care. If I were a more suspicious man I'd say that either the point was never to reduce the use of social media by kids in the first place, or it was well intentioned but railroaded into toothlessness by lobbyists.
  - lifestyleguru 2mo ago
    It's impossible to keep kids out if there is a non small amount of parents sucking their kids into social media.
  - anenefan 2mo ago
    The big issue that media and the like are careful not to mention lately were the algorithms social media refused to do anything about when asked to by the govt when the public complained -too hard or whatever- back 7 or 8 years ago. At the time parents were discovering some social media [1] was funnelling children into darker areas [focus teenage anxiety] for profit. Though bullying was one of the concerns for children, the under 16 ban means any smart social media company, with an understanding some kids will still use social media just like under age unlicensed driving still happens, the last thing the company needs is ending up in the courts due to the bad algorithms or piss poor moderation. With the ban it should be assumed, for they (social media and their friends) seem to be claiming their pii scraping and analysis is near hopeless, they will have preemptively removed the troubling algorithms at the very least - less they find themselves in the courts due to use by an under 16 child that was groomed to a dark place, without a leg to stand on. The ban also means parents and teachers alike have the means to make children put their phone down or away and pay more attention to real life things. [1] One in particular iirc though.
khalic 2mo ago
[flagged]
- docdeek 2mo ago
  It’s an AFP story - that’s a reputable news service.
  - khalic 2mo ago
    And did you check where the information comes from?
    - docdeek 2mo ago
      AFP is where France24 got their information, and both AFP and France24 are reliable sources of news. Maybe you had an issue with the source AFP relied on?
      - khalic 2mo ago
        So no, you didn't, the info comes from an app for parental surveillance. This is in no way a random sample that would be needed for reliable data AFP is subject to the same scrutiny as others, and definitely put out some terrible pieces, badly sourced from time to time
- alphager 2mo ago
  France24 is a reliable news channel based in France.
CrzyLngPwd 2mo ago
Nature finds a way :-p Also, who allows their 10-12yr old children to use TikTok, Instagram or Snapchat, FFS!
- ramon156 2mo ago
  Do you think parents have a say in it? Kids find a way. Kids just don't understand the effects that it has on them
  - alt227 2mo ago
    Kids cant find a way if they dont have access to a phone. To be able to do this they need unrestricted access to a smart phone in their personal time. This is something parents very much can control for 10-12yr olds.
    - boomlinde 2mo ago
      A parent can reasonably ensure that their child doesn't have a phone. Ensuring that they don't have access to a phone is much more difficult. I suppose that you can insist that your children only socialize with other children under your supervision, the effect of which is twofold: you can see that they don't use a phone, and they will be much less likely to have friends in the first place.
    - jvvw 2mo ago
      It's very hard to not give them internet access at all though even if you don't give them a phone, because they need it for homework and you can't and don't want to supervise them every moment they are doing homework.
  - benjaminwootton 2mo ago
    Of course they have a say in it. It’s bordering on neglect to give a 10 year old that junk.
  - Alexander-Barth 2mo ago
    You enable parental control on the phone before you give it to your kid. Then you can easily manage allowed applications/web sites and screen time.
JumpCrisscross 2mo ago
The teeth have to apply to the social media companies. Fines for under-16 users.
- petcat 2mo ago
  Such a thing would require mandatory age verification of every user of the platform, which is obviously a significant privacy complication.
  - roosterIllusi0n 2mo ago
    We do not need to give into the solutions supported by the tech companies. Voters need to vote for a solution that restricts them, not us. I say lock down a legal definition for social media that only applies to sites that alter what you see based on algorithms. Ban them on all internet connections by default until the account owner undoes the block and the block will be per device when it comes to phones. We can also block these sites in all wifi routers until someone disables it there too. Yes, adults can just unlock it for their kids, but that is something that could be addressed if a problem. All solutions can be bypassed by a willing parent.
  - JumpCrisscross 2mo ago
    > Such a thing would require mandatory age verification of every user of the platform Maybe, maybe not. Either way, it would be entirely between the social media companies and their users. No blanket requirements across devices or the internet. I’d add a provision that creates even steeper fines and private liability for retaining any ID, etc. collected to verify age.
  - ben_w 2mo ago
    > which is obviously a significant privacy complication. I'm sure the companies will default to the darkest of dark patterns, and the most privacy violating mechanism possible, but the law doesn't have to be written to require this, and can be written to forbid it. Same, on both counts, as the cookie popups. Consent not actually required for things necessary for the functionality of the system, and the popups themselves are often not compatible with the law as written. Age verification can be done in a way that preserves privacy. The websites must be required to do so, and fined if they try to weasel out of privacy preservation. Remember that these sites spent years insisting people use their "real name" and if they thought you weren't doing so they wanted users to show a government ID. These sites want people using real photos as their profile picture. These sites want to know where you live, where you work, and of course who your friends are.
dottjt 2mo ago
I hate how this is described as a social media ban. It's a social media delay.
- phoghed 2mo ago
  Similar to delaying access to alcohol or nicotine because it’s known to be harmful to children. That’s never really framed as a ban.
- amiga386 2mo ago
  Primarily it's social media forced deanonymization, with "think of the children" as an excuse.
respectattentio 2mo ago
Telegram CEO predicted this the moment countries started to announce that. His idea, that I completely agree with, is: Awareness > Control
tescreal 2mo ago
Banning is the only surefire way to provoke interest among kids. Whatever they're denied, they will inevitably be drawn to (at least a healthy %).
phoghed 2mo ago
The number of you who confidently commented something incorrect because you couldn’t be bothered to read the 13 sentence article is as unsurprising as it is disappointing.
HelloUsername 2mo ago
Related: "Australia's social media ban has failed (reuters.com)" 02.aug.2026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49141877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49141877 127 comments
halsafar 2mo ago
Who would have thought banning something would make it attractive to kids. Radical.
- giuliomagnifico 2mo ago
  Exactly. During Prohibition, did alcohol consumption decrease, including of course, illegal alcohol consumption? Then… I also wonder how many Australian teens are using less regulated and lesser-known social networks
  - general1465 2mo ago
    I think that the fragmentation of social networks is what hurts big social networks the most. It creates competitors who can tune their formula / algorithm in obscurity and then just "come out of nowhere"
lifestyleguru 2mo ago
While keeping kids away from social media makes sense, legislative ban leads straight to implementing invasive biometric verification for everyone. Is there a chance to make the dopamine fueling scrolling only a phase, just like e.g. messaging over ICQ is a thing of the past? I mean seriously, people who remember birth of these media are getting old and unattractive, newcomer influencers are thoroughbred professionals, and AI slop is taking over the content.

LOL - I remember saying this would not be something that could be policed, and a bunch of my fellow countrymen tut-tutting at me saying things like “it’s the thought that counts”, etc. Now it’s gone underground and it’s worse than ever. Meantime, there are kids in high schools across the nation who can’t watch World War II documentaries on Youtube because that’s considered “restricted content”. You can’t make this shit up.

grebc 2mo ago
Best ban them at the DNS level if you want to get into it. And not by age. Edit: any rule/law has ways around it. It’s the intent of the law that matters, and I do not think the sentiment in the community that made it possible is worried about your LOL.
bko 2mo ago
The law basically said these companies have to have reasonable measures. They could make a dent if they actually required age verification. But people think it's some civil rights violation like you have some fundamental right to use social media. Also it's not underground. Kids aren't allowed to create accounts and just lie about their age. Below 13yo did that before as that's the min she already.
- chris_wot 2mo ago
  So basically, you say it's all ineffective and can't be policed.
alt227 2mo ago
It isnt worse than ever. Read the article, usage is down overall since the ban.

bko 2mo ago

Misleading title. Usage dropped after the ban and has risen slightly since the initial drop. The article does very little besides report this. It speculates that it might be due to vpn or the ban not working. It doesn't even go into how the ban works or and basic journalistic follow up questions. Does anyone have a better source or info why it's not effective

codebje 2mo ago
Source: Australian, with teenager. 1. It's not a ban on using social media, it's a requirement for age verification to create an account. This only limits usage on the few platforms that force an account to do anything. 2. The technical controls platforms implement are, unsurprisingly, generally quite weak. Kids are crafty enough to circumvent them, and share how freely. 3. Wannabe-influencer parents just create accounts for their kids, making the circumvention trivial. 4. There are no consequences for using a social media account while under 16. I think the final point is the main one, though. By design there's no mechanism in place for the government to take any action if a kid gets onto social media, only if a platform fails to implement age checks that satisfy the legislation's criteria. So platforms all implemented tokenistic age checks. Platforms don't care, or need to care, if they get bypassed. The government doesn't care. If I were a more suspicious man I'd say that either the point was never to reduce the use of social media by kids in the first place, or it was well intentioned but railroaded into toothlessness by lobbyists.
- lifestyleguru 2mo ago
  It's impossible to keep kids out if there is a non small amount of parents sucking their kids into social media.
- anenefan 2mo ago
  The big issue that media and the like are careful not to mention lately were the algorithms social media refused to do anything about when asked to by the govt when the public complained -too hard or whatever- back 7 or 8 years ago. At the time parents were discovering some social media [1] was funnelling children into darker areas [focus teenage anxiety] for profit. Though bullying was one of the concerns for children, the under 16 ban means any smart social media company, with an understanding some kids will still use social media just like under age unlicensed driving still happens, the last thing the company needs is ending up in the courts due to the bad algorithms or piss poor moderation. With the ban it should be assumed, for they (social media and their friends) seem to be claiming their pii scraping and analysis is near hopeless, they will have preemptively removed the troubling algorithms at the very least - less they find themselves in the courts due to use by an under 16 child that was groomed to a dark place, without a leg to stand on. The ban also means parents and teachers alike have the means to make children put their phone down or away and pay more attention to real life things. [1] One in particular iirc though.

khalic 2mo ago

[flagged]

docdeek 2mo ago
It’s an AFP story - that’s a reputable news service.
- khalic 2mo ago
  And did you check where the information comes from?
  - docdeek 2mo ago
    AFP is where France24 got their information, and both AFP and France24 are reliable sources of news. Maybe you had an issue with the source AFP relied on?
    - khalic 2mo ago
      So no, you didn't, the info comes from an app for parental surveillance. This is in no way a random sample that would be needed for reliable data AFP is subject to the same scrutiny as others, and definitely put out some terrible pieces, badly sourced from time to time
alphager 2mo ago
France24 is a reliable news channel based in France.

CrzyLngPwd 2mo ago

Nature finds a way :-p Also, who allows their 10-12yr old children to use TikTok, Instagram or Snapchat, FFS!

ramon156 2mo ago
Do you think parents have a say in it? Kids find a way. Kids just don't understand the effects that it has on them
- alt227 2mo ago
  Kids cant find a way if they dont have access to a phone. To be able to do this they need unrestricted access to a smart phone in their personal time. This is something parents very much can control for 10-12yr olds.
  - boomlinde 2mo ago
    A parent can reasonably ensure that their child doesn't have a phone. Ensuring that they don't have access to a phone is much more difficult. I suppose that you can insist that your children only socialize with other children under your supervision, the effect of which is twofold: you can see that they don't use a phone, and they will be much less likely to have friends in the first place.
  - jvvw 2mo ago
    It's very hard to not give them internet access at all though even if you don't give them a phone, because they need it for homework and you can't and don't want to supervise them every moment they are doing homework.
- benjaminwootton 2mo ago
  Of course they have a say in it. It’s bordering on neglect to give a 10 year old that junk.
- Alexander-Barth 2mo ago
  You enable parental control on the phone before you give it to your kid. Then you can easily manage allowed applications/web sites and screen time.

JumpCrisscross 2mo ago

The teeth have to apply to the social media companies. Fines for under-16 users.

petcat 2mo ago
Such a thing would require mandatory age verification of every user of the platform, which is obviously a significant privacy complication.
- roosterIllusi0n 2mo ago
  We do not need to give into the solutions supported by the tech companies. Voters need to vote for a solution that restricts them, not us. I say lock down a legal definition for social media that only applies to sites that alter what you see based on algorithms. Ban them on all internet connections by default until the account owner undoes the block and the block will be per device when it comes to phones. We can also block these sites in all wifi routers until someone disables it there too. Yes, adults can just unlock it for their kids, but that is something that could be addressed if a problem. All solutions can be bypassed by a willing parent.
- JumpCrisscross 2mo ago
  > Such a thing would require mandatory age verification of every user of the platform Maybe, maybe not. Either way, it would be entirely between the social media companies and their users. No blanket requirements across devices or the internet. I’d add a provision that creates even steeper fines and private liability for retaining any ID, etc. collected to verify age.
- ben_w 2mo ago
  > which is obviously a significant privacy complication. I'm sure the companies will default to the darkest of dark patterns, and the most privacy violating mechanism possible, but the law doesn't have to be written to require this, and can be written to forbid it. Same, on both counts, as the cookie popups. Consent not actually required for things necessary for the functionality of the system, and the popups themselves are often not compatible with the law as written. Age verification can be done in a way that preserves privacy. The websites must be required to do so, and fined if they try to weasel out of privacy preservation. Remember that these sites spent years insisting people use their "real name" and if they thought you weren't doing so they wanted users to show a government ID. These sites want people using real photos as their profile picture. These sites want to know where you live, where you work, and of course who your friends are.

dottjt 2mo ago

I hate how this is described as a social media ban. It's a social media delay.

phoghed 2mo ago
Similar to delaying access to alcohol or nicotine because it’s known to be harmful to children. That’s never really framed as a ban.
amiga386 2mo ago
Primarily it's social media forced deanonymization, with "think of the children" as an excuse.

respectattentio 2mo ago

Telegram CEO predicted this the moment countries started to announce that. His idea, that I completely agree with, is: Awareness > Control

tescreal 2mo ago

Banning is the only surefire way to provoke interest among kids. Whatever they're denied, they will inevitably be drawn to (at least a healthy %).

phoghed 2mo ago

The number of you who confidently commented something incorrect because you couldn’t be bothered to read the 13 sentence article is as unsurprising as it is disappointing.

HelloUsername 2mo ago

Related: "Australia's social media ban has failed (reuters.com)" 02.aug.2026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49141877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49141877 127 comments

halsafar 2mo ago

Who would have thought banning something would make it attractive to kids. Radical.

giuliomagnifico 2mo ago
Exactly. During Prohibition, did alcohol consumption decrease, including of course, illegal alcohol consumption? Then… I also wonder how many Australian teens are using less regulated and lesser-known social networks
- general1465 2mo ago
  I think that the fragmentation of social networks is what hurts big social networks the most. It creates competitors who can tune their formula / algorithm in obscurity and then just "come out of nowhere"

lifestyleguru 2mo ago

While keeping kids away from social media makes sense, legislative ban leads straight to implementing invasive biometric verification for everyone. Is there a chance to make the dopamine fueling scrolling only a phase, just like e.g. messaging over ICQ is a thing of the past? I mean seriously, people who remember birth of these media are getting old and unattractive, newcomer influencers are thoroughbred professionals, and AI slop is taking over the content.