Starting this Wednesday, many Australian teens will find it near impossible to access social media. That’s because, as of Dec. 10, social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram must bar those under the age of 16, or face significant fines. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the pending ban “one of the biggest social and cultural changes our nation has faced” in a statement.
Much is riding on this ban—and not just in Australia. Other countries in the region are watching Canberra’s ban closely. Malaysia, for example, said that it also plans to bar under-16s from accessing social media platforms starting next year.
Other countries are considering less drastic ways to control teenagers’ social media use. On Nov. 30, Singapore said it would ban the use of smartphones on secondary school campuses.
Yet, governments in Australia and Malaysia argue a full social media ban is necessary to protect youth from online harms such as cyberbullying, sexual exploitation and financial scams.
Tech companies have had varied responses to the social media ban.
Some, like Meta, have been compliant, starting to remove Australian under-16s from Instagram, Threads and Facebook from Dec. 4, a week before the national ban kicks in. The social media giant reaffirmed their commitment to adhere to Australian law, but called for app stores to instead be held accountable for age verification.
“The government should require app stores to verify age and obtain parental approval whenever teens under 16 download apps, eliminating the need for teens to verify their age multiple times across different apps,” a Meta spokesperson said.
Others, like YouTube, sought to be excluded from the ban, with parent company Google even threatening to sue the Australian federal government in July 2025—to no avail.
However, experts told Fortune that these bans may, in fact, be harmful, denying young people the place to develop their own identities and the space to learn healthy digital habits.
“A healthy part of the development process and grappling with the human condition is the process of finding oneself. Consuming cultural material, connecting with others, and finding your community and identity is part of that human experience,” says Andrew Yee, an assistant professor at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU)’s Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information.
Social media “allows young people to derive information, gain affirmation and build community,” says Sun Sun Lim, a professor in communications and technology at the Singapore Management University (SMU), who also calls bans “a very rough tool.”
Yee, from NTU, 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 kids to go “cold turkey” off social media could also make for a difficult transition to the digital world once they are of age, argues Chew Han Ei, a senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in the National University of Singapore (NUS).
“The sensible way is to slowly scaffold [social media use], since it’s not that healthy social media usage can be cultivated immediately,” Chew says.
Enforcement
Australia plans to enforce its social media ban by imposing a fine of 49.5 million Australian dollars (US$32.9 million) on social media companies which fail to take steps to ban those under 16 from having accounts on their platforms.
Malaysia has yet to explain how it might enforce its own social media ban, but communications minister Fahmi Fadzil suggested that social media platforms could verify users through government-issued documents like passports.
Though young people may soon figure out how to maintain their access to social media. “Youths are savvy, and I am sure they will find ways to circumvent these,” says Yee of NTU. He also adds that young may migrate to platforms that aren’t traditionally defined as social media, such as gaming sites like Roblox. Other social media platforms, like YouTube, also don’t require accounts, thus limiting the efficacy of these bans, he adds.
Forcing social media platforms to collect huge amounts of personal data and government-issued identity documents could also lead to data privacy issues. “It’s very intimate personally identifiable information that’s being collected to verify age—from passports to digital IDs,” Chew, from NUS, says. “Somewhere along the line, a breach will happen.”
Moving towards healthy social media use
Ironically, some experts argue that a ban may absolve social media platforms of responsibility towards their younger users.
“Social media bans impose an unfair burden on parents to closely supervise their children’s media use,” says Lim of SMU. “As for the tech platform, they can reduce child safety safeguards that make their platforms safer, since now the assumption is that young people are banned from them, and should not have been venturing [onto them] and opening themselves up to risks.”
And rather than allow digital harms to proliferate, social media platforms should be held responsible for ensuring they “contribute to intentional and purposeful use”, argues Yee.
This could mean regulating companies’ use of user interface features like auto-play and infinite scroll, or ensuring algorithmic recommendations are not pushing harmful content to users.
“Platforms profit—lucratively, if I may add—from people’s use, so they have a responsibility to ensure that the product is safe and beneficial for its users,” Yee explains.
Finally, conversations on safe social media use should center the voices of young people, Yee adds.
“I think we need to come to a consensus as to what a safe and rights-respecting online space is,” he says. “This must include young people’s voices, as policy design should be done in consultation with the people the policy is affecting.”
Politics8 years ago