sydney, australia
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Australia’s world-first social media ban for under-16s is just the beginning for parents and campaigners who have long argued that constant scrolling is having a negative impact on young minds.
Wayne Holdsworth, the father of Mac, who took his own life at the age of 17 after being the target of a social media sexual extortion scam, joined other parents who have lost children to suicide at a select meeting at Downing Street in Sydney on Wednesday.
“It’s really sad. I shouldn’t have been here because he should have been protected,” Holdsworth told CNN at an event commemorating the law, which took effect hours earlier. “I should have known better. He should have known better.”
For Australia’s Labor government, the ban is a political victory that has garnered international attention, putting it at the forefront of what appears to be a global push to curb the influence and influence of social media platforms.
“This is Australia leading the world. This is Australia responding to global problems,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told CNN.
“We know that social harm is being caused, so we have a responsibility as a government to respond to the pleas of parents and also to respond to the young people’s movement to let us be children.”
Would banning social media for children be effective in the US?
The proposal comes as 10 platforms, including Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok, suspended or deleted accounts of children under 16 under a new law that threatens multi-million dollar fines for tech companies that don’t take “reasonable steps” to keep children off social media.
As predicted by the government, the developments have been troubling, with some children banned and others overjoyed to learn they are still online, but authorities say platforms must continue to monitor users and exclude those under 16 for as long as necessary.
Some experts say that even with good intentions, the law fails to address cyberbullying, a broader societal problem that is not platform-specific.
“This is hugely exaggerated,” says Tama Lieber, professor of internet studies at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia.
“It’s world-leading, but it’s also world-leading because a lot of the world recognizes that the tools to do this don’t really work yet.”
One of the motivations for Australia’s ban was the book An Anxious Generation by American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, published in March 2024.
The wife of South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas read the book in April last year and gave her husband a summary of its contents every night.
“I’ll never forget one night when she finished reading the book and turned to me and said, ‘We should really do something about this,'” Ms Malinauskas said at an event in Sydney on Wednesday.
So he commissioned legislation on possible solutions in the state, and, encouraged by a movement of grieving parents like Holdsworth, the idea spread to neighboring New South Wales and then to the federal level.
Hite’s main argument is that while parents have been overprotective of their children in the real world, they have failed to protect them online, exposing them to predators and at the same time depriving them of the real-life resilience skills they learn on the playground.
Message from Albanese to teenagers
Message from Albanese to teenagers
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On the eve of the ban, Ms Albanese sent a video message directly to Australian teenagers, urging them to “take up a new sport, learn a new instrument or read that book that has been sitting on your bookshelf for a while.”
His call for children to take up new interests builds on research by many experts that shows too much screen time, especially time spent scrolling through curated feeds, increases anxiety and has a long-term impact on young people’s mental health.
Experts who work closely with vulnerable and isolated children warn that depriving children of social media platforms deprives them of support networks and can leave them feeling even more isolated and alone.
They are watching this shift closely and are finding new ways to reach children, whether directly, through groups or through other platforms, to ensure they don’t fall through the safety net that Australia currently envelops them in.
The conversations parents have around the dinner table are not very different from those in the United States and other countries, as evidenced by the popularity of Haidt’s book and suggestions that other governments may follow suit.
Britain and France have made it harder for children to access age-inappropriate content in recent months, and European Union countries and others are trying to follow suit.
The Australian government believes its social media laws could set world-leading standards, similar to gun control in the 1990s, when the government introduced strict new regulations after the Port Arthur massacre.
A gunman opened fire in a Tasmanian tourist town, killing 35 people, prompting swift legislative action and vowing it would never happen again.
Although mass shootings have not been completely eradicated, firearms are not common in Australia, and mass shootings in the United States are a frequent reminder of why laws are in place.
Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman-Grant, who grew up in Seattle, said the ban would likely be the “first real antidote” to what some see as a mass social media experiment on young people.
“Like the countries that once led our country on plain cigarette packaging, gun reform, water and sun safety, the world will follow,” she said. “How can you disobey a country that clearly prioritizes the safety of teenagers over the interests of technology?”
Critics of the ban say it violates privacy and impedes free speech, and warn that any measure to monitor online activity is the beginning of increased surveillance.
Australia’s High Court is expected to hear arguments about the ban’s impact on young people’s free political speech, and some platforms themselves may take legal action to challenge the ban.
As for the heartfelt plea for action by parents who have lost children, some warn that eliminating social media will not necessarily end the bullying experienced by some young people who commit suicide.
Curtin University’s Mr Lieber said bullies were more likely to change platforms and worried the law was giving parents a false sense of security. He worries about young people who don’t have a trusted adult to help them through this time, or who have problems with their parents.
“If all young people can get through the summer without any tragic incidents happening, I think we’ve all done well,” Lieber said. “In the long term, I think it’s very difficult to tell whether a ban will be effective because the government hasn’t set targets or what success looks like.”
Teenagers targeted by bans are already flocking to smaller platforms that likely don’t have the same level of built-in protections for children’s accounts from tech companies that have seen a shift in public sentiment.
eSafety Commissioner Inman Grant has indicated that the list of banned sites will continue to grow, and sites on the list will be subject to regular monitoring, starting immediately.
“Tomorrow, I will be issuing an information notice to 10 major platforms to provide information to the public before Christmas about how these age restrictions are being implemented and whether they appear to be working in advance,” she said on Wednesday.
“Some things are certain,” she added. “Parents will be supported, families will be reconnected, and technology will be less shackled.
“Australia stands firmly as a global change agent on the right side of history.”
For Holdsworth, the next step is to further educate children under 16 about the risks they face online before they access social media.
“We now have the opportunity to educate kids from ages 8 to 15, so when kids have access to social media, they’re ready,” he told CNN.
Of his son Mac, he said: “He’ll be looking down today feeling very proud, proud to be Australian and proud to be my son.”
