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Starting this Wednesday, many Australian teens will find it near impossible to access social media. That\u2019s 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 \u201cone of the biggest social and cultural changes our nation has faced\u201d in a statement.<\/p>\n
Much is riding on this ban\u2014and not just in Australia. Other countries in the region are watching Canberra\u2019s ban closely. Malaysia, for example, said that it also plans to bar under-16s from accessing social media platforms starting next year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Other countries are considering less drastic ways to control teenagers\u2019 social media use. On Nov. 30, Singapore said it would ban the use of smartphones on secondary school campuses.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Tech companies have had varied responses to the social media ban.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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,\u201d a Meta spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
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\u2014to no avail.<\/p>\n
However, experts told Fortune <\/em>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.<\/p>\n \u201cA 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,\u201d says Andrew Yee, an assistant professor at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU)\u2019s Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information.<\/p>\n Social media \u201callows young people to derive information, gain affirmation and build community,\u201d says Sun Sun Lim, a professor in communications and technology at the Singapore Management University (SMU), who also calls bans \u201ca very rough tool.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n Forcing kids to go \u201ccold turkey\u201d 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).<\/p>\n \u201cThe sensible way is to slowly scaffold [social media use], since it\u2019s not that healthy social media usage can be cultivated immediately,\u201d Chew says.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n Though young people may soon figure out how to maintain their access to social media. \u201cYouths are savvy, and I am sure they will find ways to circumvent these,\u201d says Yee of NTU. He also adds that young may migrate to platforms that aren\u2019t traditionally defined as social media, such as gaming sites like Roblox. Other social media platforms, like YouTube, also don\u2019t require accounts, thus limiting the efficacy of these bans, he adds.<\/p>\n Forcing social media platforms to collect huge amounts of personal data and government-issued identity documents could also lead to data privacy issues. \u201cIt\u2019s very intimate personally identifiable information that\u2019s being collected to verify age\u2014from passports to digital IDs,\u201d Chew, from NUS, says. \u201cSomewhere along the line, a breach will happen.\u201d<\/p>\n Ironically, some experts argue that a ban may absolve social media platforms of responsibility towards their younger users.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSocial media bans impose an unfair burden on parents to closely supervise their children\u2019s media use,\u201d says Lim of SMU. \u201cAs 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.\u201d<\/p>\n And rather than allow digital harms to proliferate, social media platforms should be held responsible for ensuring they \u201ccontribute to intentional and purposeful use\u201d, argues Yee.<\/p>\n This could mean regulating companies\u2019 use of user interface features like auto-play and infinite scroll, or ensuring algorithmic recommendations are not pushing harmful content to users.<\/p>\n \u201cPlatforms profit\u2014lucratively, if I may add\u2014from people\u2019s use, so they have a responsibility to ensure that the product is safe and beneficial for its users,\u201d Yee explains.\u00a0<\/p>\n Finally, conversations on safe social media use should center the voices of young people, Yee adds.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we need to come to a consensus as to what a safe and rights-respecting online space is,\u201d he says. \u201cThis must include young people\u2019s voices, as policy design should be done in consultation with the people the policy is affecting.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Australia #start #banning #kids #social #media #week<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Starting this Wednesday, many … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1918,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[1914,1915,1916,1151,716,1034,930,191,13],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1917"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Enforcement<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Moving towards healthy social media use<\/strong><\/h2>\n