Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

921 points by chirau 2 days ago

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cwy54q80gy9t

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/world/asia/australia-soci... (https://archive.ph/Ba2JR)

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.

roenxi - 20 hours ago

Well, yes but the other problem is this is putting authoritarians in charge of more stuff. I had a comment comparing this to allowing people to eat too much food and that is literally where the logical outcome of this sort of thinking goes - it happens in practice, that isn't some sort of theoretical risk. The more the government decides what people can and can't want to do the worse the potential gets when they make mistakes. And this is further normalising the government making decisions about speech where they have every incentive and tendency to shut down people who tell inconvenient and important truths.
The risks are not worth the rewards of half-heatedly trying to stop kids communicating with other kids. They're still going to bully each other and what have you. They're still going to develop unrealistic expectations. They're probably even still going to use social media in practice.
- manindahat - 15 hours ago
  
  That is an argument and worth monitoring, but IMO it's not a strong enough argument to stop this.
  This sort of ban is the same as existing laws banning the sale and consumption of alcohol or driving until kids are of age they will (on average) have sufficient maturity to handle the responsibility. Something we accept.
  Kids are not banned from digital communication. My daughter can still send text messages and make phone calls.
  Kids are not banned from the consuming content on those platforms. They simply can't have an account to create their own content as it was too often abused. For example, my 12yo daughter was asked by a friend to message bomb and abuse a 12yo her friend had a crush on. That's mild compared to some of the stories I've heard from platforms like Facebook, and between about 10 - 16 many kids are just nasty.
  I believe that the line in the sand over which platforms this applies to is the ones that leverage account history to supercharge the already addictive behaviours caused by UI designs optimised to manipulate your attention and direct your purchasing power towards whoever is paying them. Something kids are particularly vulnerable to. The algorithm doesn't care if it is pushing you towards radical content as long as you are watching it for as many hours in a day as possible.
  - bigB - 7 hours ago
    
    How long will it take them to ban communications ?
    A big reason they are pushing this is Cyberbullying....yet a recent death in the news this week, the kid was literally bullied/sextorted via SMS....not social media.
    Without banning SMS and possibly calls as well, it debunks this argument
    
    fugalfervor - 3 hours ago
    
    That's the slippery slope fallacy. You assert that communications will be banned as a consequence of this, but provide no evidence that this will cause the banning of all communications.
    
    Extropy_ - 3 hours ago
    
    The assertion is not that something will inevitably happen because of this other than the further normalization of government authority over individual autonomy. That is an inherent result of this, as well as the prohibition of sale of alcohol and drugs to kids. You can argue on and on whether or not these are good, righteous, moral laws, but you cannot deny the intrinsic fact that widespread acceptance and even support of widening the scope of government control normalizes government control
    
    Swenrekcah - 7 hours ago
    
    Bullying is not new and was performed via sms before the internet. Social media however allows for easier targeting especially for bad actors that are not in the kid’s friend/acquaintance group.
    
    zikduruqe - an hour ago
    
    > Bullying is not new and was performed via sms before the internet
    I seem to remember real bullies would do it to your face before the internet. Not just anyone behind a keyboard.
    
    iamacyborg - 6 hours ago
    
    > Bullying is not new and was performed via sms before the internet.
    Pretty sure the internet was a thing well before kids got dumb phones.
    
    Swenrekcah - 5 hours ago
    
    That is true. The ubiquitous mobile internet and social media I should have said.
    
    SecretDreams - 5 hours ago
    
    > Pretty sure the internet was a thing well before kids got dumb phones.
    The internet has evolved meaningfully over the last 10 years, even. Evolved might be generous, though.
    
    iamacyborg - 2 hours ago
    
    Yeah, myspace was already dead and buried 10 years ago and we’d all stopped using msn/aim and moved to other platforms by that point
    
    mjparrott - 3 hours ago
    
    Funny enough, adults are also prone to bullying in large groups online. This does not go away later in life.
    
    Swenrekcah - an hour ago
    
    That is true and we have certainly seen our fair share of that.
    Adults are however also better equipped to deal with that, especially if they have not been subjected to such abuse as children. It is worth noting that online bullying is however not the most serious matter here, rather (in my mind at least) it is the systematic targeting of kids/teenagers to get inside their head and get them to perform violent acts against themselves or others around them.
    
    testing22321 - an hour ago
    
    > How long will it take them to ban communications?
    Following your reasoning:
    Alcohol is banned for children. How long until they ban all drinks?
    Driving is banned for children. How long until they ban all self-directed transport?
    Voting is banned for children. How long until they pan all political opinion?
    No. Just no.
    
    re-thc - 7 hours ago
    
    > How long will it take them to ban communications ?
    Just ban Australia themselves.
    > A big reason they are pushing this is Cyberbullying
    Oh really now? It has been going on for so many years... A big reason they've been pushing this is it impacts their own pockets i.e. the traditional media companies.
    
    bigB - 7 hours ago
    
    Well I should have worded it "A big reason the say they are banning it is Cyberbullying" , I don't believe that at all, but you are 100% correct, they hate big tech as it always beats our corrupt, biased and inept traditional media.
    
    immibis - 6 hours ago
    
    This appears to be a slippery slope argument: if they ban specific algorithmic social media platforms that have a verified extremely negative effect on children, soon they'll ban all communications.
    It could happen that they ban all communications, but if you think so, it needs its own argument; it can't hang off the social media ban. Otherwise it is like saying that if they ban children from drinking beer, soon they'll ban them from drinking liquids.
  - fogj094j0923j4 - 14 hours ago
    
    All those services are wall-gardened so without an account, you already cannot consume the contents.
    
    texuf - 10 hours ago
    
    I feel like people are either arguing in bad faith, or we’re trying to talk to fish about the water. Its so obvious to me that people are going to get their identities stolen and the internet is going to get so much worse that I can’t understand how someone would think otherwise.
    
    skrebbel - 11 hours ago
    
    That’s a choice made by those services. They can change it.
    
    re-thc - 9 hours ago
    
    > That’s a choice made by those services. They can change it.
    Why do these services have to lose? That's a choice made by this country's government. They can change it.
    
    skrebbel - 9 hours ago
    
    They’ll lose revenue in Australia. If more governments copy this move, they’ll lose revenue there too.
    
    re-thc - 9 hours ago
    
    > If more governments copy this move, they’ll lose revenue there too.
    That's like saying every government should copy the new tariffs too. If only it was so simple...
    > They’ll lose revenue in Australia.
    Why is it always 1-way? Australia can also lose people and lose people's interest.
    
    skrebbel - 7 hours ago
    
    Lol you think people are going to leave Australia because their kids cant go on Tiktok?