It was a strange day in the digital land down under. On one side, teenagers across Australia were frantically posting their phone numbers on Snapchat stories, a desperate effort to stay connected before the guillotine dropped. On the other, their Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, was comparing the new social media ban for under-16s to the national drinking age, insisting that a few underage rule-breakers don’t invalidate a good law.
On December 10, 2025, Australia pulled off a world-first, flipping the “off” switch for millions of young people on ten major social media platforms including TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, and X. The government’s goal? To create a “digital sandpit” free from the harms of cyberbullying, predatory behaviour, and algorithmically-served despair. The teen response? A mix of fury, ingenuity, and a 400% spike in downloads for free VPN services.
As governments from Denmark to Malaysia watch this unprecedented “natural experiment” unfold, the question isn’t just whether it will work, but what “working” even looks like in a digitally-native generation.
The “Why”: A Sea of Stats and Parental Panic
The Australian government didn’t wake up and decide to annoy an entire generation on a whim. The move was propelled by sobering statistics from its own research.
- Nearly all (96%) of children aged 10-15 in Australia were using social media.
- Seven out of ten had been exposed to harmful content, including material promoting violence, eating disorders, and suicide.
- More than half reported being victims of cyberbullying, and one in seven had experienced grooming-type behaviour from adults or older children.
For many Australian parents, these weren’t just numbers. Polls showed about three-quarters of parents supported the ban, seeing it as a necessary circuit breaker in the daily battle over screen time and online safety. As one parent told The Guardian, the ban “provides us with a support framework” to help a daughter they described as “completely addicted”.
The “How”: Age Checks, Fines, and a Cat-and-Mouse Game
The mechanics of the ban are deceptively simple: platforms must take “reasonable steps” to block new under-16 accounts and deactivate existing ones, facing fines of up to A$49.5 million for serious breaches. The burden is squarely on the tech giants, not on kids or parents.
The tricky part is the “reasonable steps.” The government suggests a mix of age-assurance tech:
- Biometric Guessing: Using “age inference” algorithms or facial/voice recognition to estimate age from a selfie or video.
- Official ID: Uploading a driver’s license or passport.
- Financial Checks: Linking a bank account for verification (as offered by Snapchat).
However, the government’s own report found facial assessment tech to be “least reliable for teenagers”. This has led to absurd early outcomes: some 15-year-olds were devastated as their friends’ accounts were verified as “18,” leaving them socially isolated, while others glitched through the checks themselves.
Critics were quick to pounce. A former Facebook executive dryly noted that the maximum fine of A$50 million represents “about an hour and 52 minutes” of revenue for Meta. Privacy advocates warn that collecting sensitive government IDs or biometric data creates a “privacy nightmare” and a honeypot for hackers, normalizing surveillance for young people.
The Teenage Workaround: VPNs, Fake IDs, and Digital Nomads
If you think a law would stop a determined 14-year-old, you haven’t met a determined 14-year-old. The ban has turned into a crash course in digital circumvention.
- The VPN Surge: In the week before the ban, Australian searches for Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)—which mask a user’s location—hit a 10-year high. One free VPN provider reported a 400% increase in installations from Australia in the 24 hours after the ban took effect.
- Platform Migration: As mainstream apps went dark, teens flocked to alternatives. Photo-sharing app Yope saw “very fast growth” to about 100,000 Australian users. Lemon8, owned by TikTok’s parent company, also surged in popularity.
- The “Splinternet”: Critics like the Cato Institute’s David Inserra argue this migration is dangerous, driving teens to “more isolated communities and platforms with fewer protections”. It also highlights a glaring loophole: the ban doesn’t cover online gaming platforms like Roblox or Discord, or AI chatbots, which have their own documented risks.
One father admitted to The Guardian that the ban had forced him to “teach [his] child how to break the law” by setting up VPNs and helping her bypass age-checks.
The Global Jury: Who’s Cheering, Who’s Jeering, and Who’s Suing?
The world is watching Australia’s experiment with intense interest.
The Supporters:
- Governments: Denmark has announced plans for an under-15 ban, and Norway, France, Spain, and Malaysia are considering similar moves.
- Academics: U.S. social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation, posted “Bravo Australia” on X, framing the ban as freeing kids from a “social media trap”.
The Critics:
- Rights & Child Advocates: UNICEF Australia stated the ban “won’t fix the problems,” arguing for making platforms safer rather than cutting access. Amnesty International called it an “ineffective quick fix” that ignores young people’s right to expression, information, and community.
- Mental Health Experts: Organisations like Orygen warn a blunt ban could isolate marginalized youth who rely on online spaces for vital support and connection.
- The Platforms: Most grumbled but complied. YouTube argued the “rushed” law makes kids less safe by pushing them to use the platform without an account, stripping away parental controls. Reddit has taken the extraordinary step of filing a High Court challenge, arguing the law infringes on political communication and forces intrusive verification on everyone.
A World of Different Approaches
The table below shows how other regions are tackling the same issue differently:
The Unanswered Questions: What Are We Actually Measuring?
The ultimate success of Australia’s ban won’t be measured in VPN downloads or teen grumbling, but in long-term outcomes. The eSafety Commissioner has launched a major study to find out if banned teens are:
- Sleeping more and taking less medication like antidepressants.
- Scoring higher on standardized (Naplan) tests.
- Spending more time on sports fields or reading books.
Conversely, researchers will also watch for “unintended consequences”: whether kids are driven to darker corners of the web, or if they simply become more digitally savvy rule-breakers.
For now, Australia has drawn a line in the digital sand. Whether that line holds, gets washed away by a tide of teenage ingenuity, or simply pushes the problem somewhere else, is the billion-dollar experiment the whole world is waiting to see. One thing is certain: the conversation about kids and screens will never be the same.