Australia’s Under-16 Social Media Ban

Bold Experiment or Blunt Instrument?

By coincidence, I find myself in Australia this week watching my 15-year-old grandson play cricket against boys his age—precisely the cohort targeted by the new national ban on social media use for under-16s.

The timing could not be better for observing how this “world-first” policy is landing among the teenagers it is meant to protect. And based on the conversations circulating through the junior cricket community, Australia’s lawmakers may have overestimated the willingness of adolescents to quietly accept the sudden disappearance of TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and the rest of the digital ecosystem that forms such a large part of their social world.

The New Zealand boys in this touring group are, to put it mildly, bemused. They cannot quite comprehend why their Australian counterparts have been subjected to such sweeping restrictions. But for the Australians, it has been big news—and not always warmly received.

When I turned on the ABC 24-hour news channel last night, the story led the bulletin. The tone of the reporting was decidedly sympathetic to the government’s intentions, which is hardly surprising given the ABC’s well-known reticence in harshly criticising Labor governments.

Still, the coverage did produce one memorable interview with a Canberra schoolboy who looked as though he had not strayed far from a screen in years. He happily conceded that the ban “would be better for his mental health” and might push him toward “more sport.” That, of course, is the foundational logic behind the policy: reduce exposure to addictive platforms, and adolescents might rediscover real-world activities and healthier social patterns.

The ABC also framed the policy as potentially precedent-setting. Australia, they reminded viewers, was among the first countries to make seatbelts compulsory in the early 1970s, and the rest of the world followed. Perhaps, they suggested, the same thing will happen with social media regulation.

But I decided to conduct some “field research” of my own. My grandson tells me that many of the Australians he has been playing with are rather grumpy about the whole thing and have already begun devising workarounds. In fact, several appear to have been strategically preparing for such a crackdown for years. When they first signed up for Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat or TikTok, they inflated their age by a year or two, meaning the platforms now recognise them as already 16 or older. Their accounts remain untouched.

Even more revealing is the fact that enforcement appears to be wildly inconsistent. Among the boys my grandson has spoken with, those who have been banned from one platform have often retained access to others. A teenager might find his TikTok account deactivated but still operate freely on Instagram or Snapchat, neither of which has yet demanded age verification.

Facebook, as the boys were keen to stress, is strictly for older generations.

The Federal Communications Minister Annika Wells has reported that 200,000 TikTok accounts have already been removed, but even she conceded that the platforms were supposed to have begun their purge days before the ban formally commenced. Ten social media sites fall under the ban: Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, X, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, YouTube, Kick and Reddit. More may follow. Yet the lived reality on the ground suggests that enforcement is, at best, porous.

An even more intriguing trend is emerging: the shift toward WhatsApp. As my grandson explains, the boys are increasingly swapping mobile numbers and communicating via text or WhatsApp messaging, both of which allow easy video sharing within private groups. In other words, even if the regulated platforms clamp down, unrestricted channels remain readily available, and behaviour simply migrates.

This begs the question: is the ban achieving its intended purpose, or is it merely redirecting teenage ingenuity? Governments routinely underestimate adolescents’ capacity to circumvent rules that they consider unreasonable. Moreover, the policy risks widening the gap between parents who can supervise their children’s digital workarounds and those who cannot. The result may be less a reduction in harmful online exposure and more a shift into less visible, less regulated digital spaces.

New Zealand will undoubtedly watch Australia’s experiment with interest. The threat of $50 million fines for companies that fail to take “reasonable steps” to eliminate underage accounts is certainly attention-grabbing. But defining “reasonable steps” in the constantly shifting world of technology will be challenging. And enforcement, as the first week of the ban has shown, may prove patchy at best.

As for future New Zealand policy, my grandson is nonchalant—he will be 16 next year. His younger siblings, aged 12 and 9, might feel differently. Whether Australia’s bold move becomes a global model or a cautionary tale will depend not on its intentions—which are widely acknowledged as sincere—but on its real-world effectiveness. Early signs suggest the battle between regulators and teenagers may be far more complex than policymakers anticipated.