The law is as tight as a door that really closes, and Australia’s ban on social media for under-16s appears to have left the window open. On June 26, six months after taking the first step worldwide, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he was determined to make the ban as strong as possible, after a new study found it did nothing to keep young people away from their target bases.
The study, published in the British Medical Journal, is the unsavory part. It found that 85% of Australians aged 12 to 15 were still using social media three months after the ban was introduced.
Two-thirds of young users stay online in the easiest ways available, declaring their age to be over 16, or posting a selfie that the platform’s system accepts as adult. The gate is there. Young people have been around it a lot.
The government’s response is to strengthen the law instead of rewriting the law. Canberra plans to pressure test the law, which prevents platforms including Meta’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube from providing accounts to under-16s.
TNW City Coworking Space – Where your best work happens
A workplace designed for growth, collaboration, and endless networking opportunities at the heart of technology.
The main focus, Albanese pointed out, is to ensure that the eSafety Commission, the country’s internet regulator, is given enough power to carry out its mandate.
The regulator had already said that Meta, TikTok, and YouTube were against the ban.
That administrator does not wait quietly. The eSafety Commissioner and Communications Minister Anika Wells said they were preparing legal action against a number of platforms.
Companies found to have systematically failed to uphold the ban face a maximum fine of A$49.5m, about $34m, an amount large enough to concentrate the company without being large enough to threaten the businesses in which it operates.
The figures in the study sharpen the case that the government is trying to make. The BMJ paper suggests that the law has changed where young people say they are rather than where they actually are.
An age limit that depends on the user honestly entering a date of birth, or on an accurate age-guessing algorithm from a selfie, is an age limit that has an obvious soft spot, and two-thirds of young users seem to have found it.
Australia’s position as a first mover offers temptation to audiences beyond its borders. Governments in Europe and elsewhere have reached a similar age.
Norway has moved to follow Australia with its ban on under-16s, the UK has scaled up similar restrictions, and several have been watching Canberra to see if tougher bans can be made to work in practice rather than on the rulebook alone.
The preliminary evidence is mixed enough to be useful for both camps: evidence that legislation can be passed and courts forced to act, and evidence that passing legislation is only half the problem. The Italian prime minister has gone further, warning that such a ban is easily circumvented.
The deeper problem is what the BMJ paper reveals: the most enforced age limit for self-declaration is the most enforced age limit for trust. Australia legislated first, before the rest of the world, and is now publicly discovering what it takes to enforce such a law.
Some governments watching the research will have noticed both the desire and the gap between law and result.
Next is the process. Legal action against fake platforms, a review of the powers of the eSafety Commission, and, perhaps, a second study to measure whether enforcement is moving the 85% figure. The ban is for six months. The question of whether it works is still open.
