David Inserra
As of December 10, Australia will implement sweeping restrictions on access to social media for individuals under 16. Hailed as the first of its kind, Australia’s Parliament passed a law in 2024 banning individuals under 16 from having accounts on major social media platforms and requiring these platforms to verify the age of everyone logging in.
The law’s initial list of restricted platforms includes Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, Reddit, Threads, Kick, Threads, and Twitch. Other platforms, including Steam, Bluesky, WhatsApp, and YouTube Kids, were considered but not included in the ban. That could change at any point in the future, however, if those platforms reach a certain number of users or Australia’s eSafety Commission decides a platform has come to sufficiently resemble social media rather than merely gaming or peer-to-peer communications.
However, despite the bill’s promises to protect children from online harms, the ban and new age assurance requirements create new threats and vulnerabilities, not only for the young children it aims to protect, but also for all internet users in Australia. One can be sympathetic to the idea of protecting children, while still finding this policy to be extremely harmful for internet users of all ages. More specifically, the law will:
- inhibit industry efforts to restrict “harmful” content or behaviors for minors;
- push minors or those who need to stay anonymous online to circumnavigate the law through various means;
- create massive data privacy and security risks for all Australians, which chills free expression;
- restrict access to information and speech of minors
Online Harms
The Australian government is very clear that its intent is the paternalistic protection of minors from both real and perceived harms of social media. The law contains no exceptions under the law for parents who may want to allow their child to have access to one of these platforms, with the Australian government deciding it—not parents—knows what is best for every child. In the view of the government, social media poses various harms, including too much problematic content online for minors, as well as unhealthy social media algorithms and patterns of use.
But in its attempt to limit these harms, the government is introducing new ones. The law bans under-16s from having social media accounts, but it does not prevent children from visiting social media platforms on the web. So, children can still search for Instagram or TikTok content, find subreddits, or watch Twitch streams, but they can’t log in and have a curated feed of content. Although platform algorithms are criticized for various reasons, they at least attempt to surface content that users are interested in and restrict potentially harmful types of content.
With no account, there is no curation occurring, and so children will find whatever pops up first, either on those platforms or in their search results.
Even worse, banning teenagers from having accounts also means that the many parental controls and age restrictions will be disabled. Most large platforms allow users or their parents to have some sort of control over their feeds. Accounts can be registered as youth accounts, with additional limitations on the types of content that can be viewed and the amount of time spent on the platform. Parents can often gain access and visibility into the viewing and search history of their children’s accounts. Some platforms allow parents to formally link their children’s accounts to their own, gaining even more control over their children’s use of the platform. But by outlawing youth accounts, many of these limitations on children’s use of a platform disappear.
Children will still view content from social media under this law, but they will do so with even fewer protections and safeguards.
Bypassing the law
This prior problem is only exacerbated by the fact that not all young users will comply with the new law and leave social media. Whenever there has been an effort to restrict or ban certain types of websites, we have consistently seen efforts to get around such laws.
The easiest solution is for users to simply move to new platforms. For example, when Brazil banned X for failing to abide by secretive removal orders, many Brazilians simply switched to Bluesky. Indeed, this appears to be happening already in Australia, with a drastic spike in users on small platforms like Yope. The Australian eSafety Commission explicitly acknowledged that it will be continually updating the list of banned platforms, but even so, new platforms are always springing up. This just means that the Australian government will be continually playing whack-a-mole to stop kids from using whatever social platform they turn to next.
But even worse, these alternative platforms may also be less safe for young users. For example, just looking at Yope, it doesn’t appear to have built-in parental controls because it’s a relatively small and new platform. Parler rapidly rose to prominence in 2020 but was removed from Apple and Google app stores, and Amazon Web Services stopped hosting it due to its lack of moderation of dangerous content. This law will also push many users toward platforms that are more personal and private, like Telegram channels, WhatsApp Communities, and Signal Groups, which are not currently banned because they are important tools for encrypted and direct communication. And of course, sites like 4chan and other dark corners of the web will still be available. While the law certainly does not intend to drive children into more isolated communities and platforms with fewer protections, that is effectively what will happen.
But the more private and obscure these platforms get, the harder it is for both the government and parents to monitor what is going on. Bad actors and behavior on Facebook or TikTok definitely exist, but there is generally a public-facing profile or element that can be detected by the platforms or by parents, especially when various parental controls or platform safety tools are employed. If children end up engaging with each other in fully encrypted Telegram channels, it will be far harder for adults to intervene and stop bad actors. And if children are constantly migrating towards new platforms, some that may never have been designed with children in mind, then many of the same dangers will only be exacerbated.
Another avoidance technique is for users to employ VPNs or similar technologies that mask the location of the user, thus avoiding jurisdiction-specific restrictions. After states like Utah added age verification to adult pornographic websites, VPN usage skyrocketed. After the UK’s Online Safety Act went into force, a similar spike in VPN usage occurred. While authorities in some jurisdictions are considering threatening VPNs, banning VPNs would be an extreme action. Using a VPN is simply a good cybersecurity practice, and enforcing it would require a draconian level of internet policing. While Australia vaguely expects platforms to try to stop VPN usage, that will be a tall order in practice. And the tech-savvy youth are likely to easily be able to figure out how to use VPNs and similar workarounds to defeat the age assurance efforts demanded by the Australian government.
Security and Speech
Whenever discussing age verification, it is essential to recognize that this doesn’t just mean that children will need to prove their identity. Everyone will need to prove their identity because platforms don’t know if a user is 6, 16, or 61. And while the law demands that platforms provide multiple ways to authenticate the age of a user, the reality is that it may be very difficult to distinguish between a 15-year-old and a 16-year-old without essentially requiring ID checks for all or many users. The point is that this age assurance regime will require users of all ages to provide platforms, some of which previously allowed anonymous or pseudonymous accounts and speech, with some significant degree of personal information and documentation.
But requiring such information immediately puts anonymous speech at risk. Platforms now must have proof of who someone is, which means that it is possible for such information to be leaked or hacked, thus revealing a user’s identity. And there will be a lot of identity data these platforms will need to collect, creating a tempting target for hackers in an environment where there are constant data breaches. Earlier this year, the platform Tea, a dating safety app, had a breach of over a million private messages, as well as including around 13,000 photos and images of identification documents that were used to verify the identity of the women. Australia has seen large data breaches at Quantas (2025), MediSecure (2024), Medibank (2022), and others.
To minimize this risk, Australian law requires platforms to delete such identity details after verification. However, the risk still remains, not to mention putting platforms between a rock and a hard place: if the eSafety Commission later investigates a platform for failing to do enough to block underage users, a platform that follows the law and deletes the identity data now has no proof that it has sufficiently followed the law. But if they do illegally keep some data, then they will have evidence to show E‑Safety that they did indeed perform many checks on their users.
The result is that when whistleblowers want to speak out, Australians who desire to discuss sensitive topics, or those in dangerous situations, need to come forward under the veil of anonymity online; they must now ask themselves if they still feel comfortable speaking online knowing that their speech may be identified. Australia’s age assurance regime threatens to chill speech on a wide variety of topics that occur on the restricted platforms.
Restricting Freedom
And this, of course, leads to the most obvious casualty of the Australian social media restrictions: free expression down under. While the bill threatens to chill the speech of everyone speaking online, it also completely restricts the speech of those under 16. As noted earlier, the law contains no exceptions for children. One could imagine rising young actors, activists, or influencers who have created a brand or business, but have simply been deprived of their platforms.
But the more likely case is average Australian kids who found a community online that matched their interests or lifestyle. Twitch, for example, is a platform dedicated to hosting the live streaming of video gaming that is subject to this ban because the livestreams allow viewers to engage with livestreamers and those watching the stream. But this is the equivalent of banning websites that stream American or Australian rules football because it allows people to comment on the game. And video gaming is not just something kids play in their basements with friends after school. Professional gaming, known as esports, has become widespread. In the US, there is even a National Association of Collegiate Esports that functions like the NCAA, and colleges, high schools, and middle schools all field esports teams. You can watch professional players and teams from around the world compete in League of Legends, Counter-Strike, or Overwatch. For kids who love playing and watching gaming, they have simply lost access to a major source of entertainment and community.
There will also be religious children growing up in a very progressive area, teenagers trying to figure out their sexuality in a very conservative area, or countless other combinations where kids might not feel like they belong in their physical community but could find it online. Even if their parents want them to have that community, it’s now illegal. In explaining the law, the government itself declares, “We know that young people are not all the same.… However, the Australian Parliament voted for the restrictions for the good of all Australians under 16.” In other words, the Australian government knows these platforms may be good for some Australians, but it does not care.
Don’t Repeat Australia’s Mistakes
Australia’s ban on social media for those under 16 will mean less speech, privacy, and innovation across Australian society. Unfortunately, even as the rollout of lesser bans and age assurance measures, such as the Online Safety Act, was marked by significant problems and criticisms, proponents of this approach continue to advance these harmful, albeit well-intentioned, policies. It’s also worth noting that Australia, via separate regulations, will soon implement new age assurance requirements for those logging into internet search engines run by Google or Microsoft, further threatening online speech and privacy.
US policymakers would be wise to avoid Australia’s dodgy approach to online speech. Not only would it face significant First Amendment challenges for restricting protected speech, but it would also not resolve the underlying concerns with children’s online safety. Instead, policymakers should look to empower parents and educate children on how to best use online platforms. This approach ensures that platform content controls remain available to families, parents can best raise their kids, and kids can learn healthy habits online, all while protecting expression and privacy online.