Australia has banned children under sixteen from having accounts on major social media platforms. At the Cato Institute, David Inserra discusses some of the problems such bans may create. He writes:
The Australian government is very clear that its intent is the paternalistic protection of minors from both real and perceived harms of social media. The law contains no exceptions under the law for parents who may want to allow their child to have access to one of these platforms, with the Australian government deciding it—not parents—knows what is best for every child. In the view of the government, social media poses various harms, including too much problematic content online for minors, as well as unhealthy social media algorithms and patterns of use.
But in its attempt to limit these harms, the government is introducing new ones. The law bans under-16s from having social media accounts, but it does not prevent children from visiting social media platforms on the web. So, children can still search for Instagram or TikTok content, find subreddits, or watch Twitch streams, but they can’t log in and have a curated feed of content. Although platform algorithms are criticized for various reasons, they at least attempt to surface content that users are interested in and restrict potentially harmful types of content.
With no account, there is no curation occurring, and so children will find whatever pops up first, either on those platforms or in their search results.
Even worse, banning teenagers from having accounts also means that the many parental controls and age restrictions will be disabled. Most large platforms allow users or their parents to have some sort of control over their feeds. Accounts can be registered as youth accounts, with additional limitations on the types of content that can be viewed and the amount of time spent on the platform. Parents can often gain access and visibility into the viewing and search history of their children’s accounts. Some platforms allow parents to formally link their children’s accounts to their own, gaining even more control over their children’s use of the platform. But by outlawing youth accounts, many of these limitations on children’s use of a platform disappear.
Children will still view content from social media under this law, but they will do so with even fewer protections and safeguards.
Bypassing the law
This prior problem is only exacerbated by the fact that not all young users will comply with the new law and leave social media. Whenever there has been an effort to restrict or ban certain types of websites, we have consistently seen efforts to get around such laws.
The easiest solution is for users to simply move to new platforms. For example, when Brazil banned X for failing to abide by secretive removal orders, many Brazilians simply switched to Bluesky. Indeed, this appears to be happening already in Australia, with a drastic spike in users on small platforms like Yope. The Australian eSafety Commission explicitly acknowledged that it will be continually updating the list of banned platforms, but even so, new platforms are always springing up. This just means that the Australian government will be continually playing whack-a-mole to stop kids from using whatever social platform they turn to next.
Read more here.
