Australia will start banning kids from social media this week

A lot depends on this ban, and not just in Australia. Other countries in the region are closely monitoring Canberra’s ban. Malaysia, for example, said it also plans to ban children under 16 from accessing social media platforms starting next year.

Other countries are considering less stringent ways to control teens’ social media use. On November 30, Singapore said it would ban the use of smartphones on secondary school campuses.

However, governments in Australia and Malaysia say a complete ban on social media is necessary to protect young people from online harms such as cyberbullying, sexual exploitation and financial fraud.

Tech companies have had mixed responses to the social media ban.

Some, like Meta, have been compliant, starting to remove Australians under 16 from Instagram, Threads and Facebook from December 4, a week before the national lockdown began. The social media giant reiterated its commitment to adhering to Australian law, but instead called for app stores to be held accountable for age verification.

A Meta spokesperson said: “The government should require app stores to verify age and obtain parental consent when teens under 16 download apps, eliminating the need for teens to verify their age multiple times across different apps.”

Others, such as YouTube, sought to be excluded from the ban, and parent company Google even threatened to sue the Australian federal government in July 2025, but to no avail.

However, experts said luck This ban may actually be harmful, depriving young people of the place to develop their own identities and the space to learn healthy digital habits.

“The healthy part of developing and dealing with the human condition is the process of self-discovery,” says Andrew Yee, an assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University’s Wee Kim Wee College of Communication and Information. “Consuming cultural materials, connecting with others, and finding your community and identity is part of that human experience.”

Social media “allows young people to extract information, gain affirmation and build community,” says Sun Sun Lim, a professor of communications and technology at Singapore Management University, who calls the ban “a very cruel tool.”

Yi, of National Taiwan University, also points out that young people can turn to platforms like YouTube to learn about hobbies that may not be available in their local communities.

Forcing children to stay away from social media may also make it difficult for them to transition to the digital world once they reach adulthood, says Chiu Han-ee, a senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

“The sensible way is to scaffold slowly [social media use]“Because healthy use of social media cannot be cultivated immediately,” Chiu says.

Implementation

Australia plans to enforce its social media ban by imposing a AU$49.5 million (US$32.9 million) fine on social media companies that fail to take steps to prevent people under 16 from having accounts on their platforms.

Malaysia has not yet explained how it can enforce the ban on social media, but Communications Minister Fahmi Fazal noted that social media platforms can verify users through government-issued documents such as passports.

Although young people may soon figure out how to maintain their access to social media. “Young people are smart, and I’m sure they will find ways around these things,” says National Taiwan University’s Yi. He also adds that young people may be migrating to platforms not traditionally defined as social media, such as gaming sites like Roblox. He adds that other social media platforms, such as YouTube, also do not require accounts, which limits the effectiveness of such bans.

Forcing social media platforms to collect massive amounts of personal data and government-issued identity documents can also lead to data privacy issues. “It’s very intimate personal information that is collected for age verification, from passports to digital ID cards,” says Chiu, of the National University of Singapore. “Somewhere along the line, the breakthrough will happen.”

Moving towards healthy use of social media

Ironically, some experts argue that the ban may absolve social media platforms of responsibility towards their younger users.

“Social media bans put an unfair burden on parents to closely supervise their children’s media use,” says SMU’s Lim. “As for the technology platform, they could reduce the child safety safeguards that make their platforms safer, as the assumption now is that young people are locked out of it and should not have ventured out on it.” [onto them] “Exposing themselves to risks.”

Rather than allowing digital harms to spread, social media platforms should take responsibility for ensuring they “contribute to intentional and meaningful use,” says Yee.

This could mean regulating companies’ use of UI features like autoplay and infinite scrolling, or ensuring that algorithmic recommendations don’t push harmful content to users.

“Platforms profit – profitably, if I might add – from people using them, so they have a responsibility to ensure that the product is safe and useful for its users,” Yee explains.

Finally, conversations about safe social media use must focus on the voices of young people, Yee adds.

“I think we need to reach a consensus on what a safe, rights-respecting cyberspace is,” he says. “This must include the voices of young people, and policies should be designed in consultation with the people they affect.”