Opinion

Australian parents, carers and educators – along with international policymakers – are watching closely as the federal government implements its forthcoming social media ban for under-16s.

Many hope the ban will offer a solution to the social and developmental challenges faced by young people as they lead increasingly digital lives.

But in hoping for a silver bullet, are we missing a chance to tackle the broader (and, perhaps, more important) issues underlying these problems?

Professor Nicholas Carah, Director of the Centre for Digital Cultures and Societies at UQ, is a leading expert on how social media platforms work and how young people use them. He shares his take on the ban with Contact, explaining why he feels it could cause more harm than good for a generation raised on the internet during an already turbulent era.

On December 10 this year, Australians under 16 will be ‘banned’ from social media. Children across the country will rush out of school to spend a summer riding bikes until the street lights come on, mooching around the mall, making match bombs and exploding them in storm water drains – doing everything that made childhood what it was before smartphones and the endless scroll. 

We joke, but I think these fantasies of childhood pre-social media capture something important. We want young people to have spaces that are their own for play, adventure, creativity and even a little bit of a mind-bending stupidity. Out of childhoods like these grow thoughtful, funny, creative and resilient adults.

After the ban, we’ll find ourselves still holding all these questions about making space in the world for our kids. They’ll still be little cyborgs who grew up in a hyper-digital world – there’s no going back. 

The first thing that many of us will realise is that this isn’t just a ban. If you’ve ever tried to ban someone from somewhere, you realise you need to stand at the door to ask everyone who tries to go in who they are. 

Under 16s will experience a ban, but everyone will experience identity verification when accessing an increasing number of digital platforms and services. The eSafety Commissioner has already confirmed TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Facebook, X, Reddit, Kick and Threads will be subject to the ban. To use them, all of us be required to demonstrate we’re over 16, which will involve giving up identifying information about ourselves. 

That’s OK if it’s our online banking or health insurance, but different if it’s our social media, streaming, gaming or search platforms. This is a significant shift in how we think about public culture, our own visibility online and how we manage the different public, professional and private aspects of our lives. 

The ban will be ‘leaky’ – people will respond to it with creative workarounds. Under 16s will not be able to ‘create or keep’ a social media account, but many young people will navigate around this by using platforms like YouTube and TikTok in a ‘logged-out’ state. If they do that on their own devices, those platforms’ algorithmic recommendation models will still be able to quickly tune into their interests and serve them endless feeds of video. They could then share videos by copying and pasting links into WhatsApp and Messenger chats. The only big change will be that they won’t be able to follow accounts, like, share or comment. 

They might start using their parents' accounts. Interesting familial uses of social media profiles might start to emerge, where parents’ accounts become a conduit for young people using social media or maintaining and building their social networks. 

Young Australians will soon show us how much care and creativity they invest in their digital lives. We ought to recognise that we are about to foist upon them a second major disruption to their social lives and relationships during their childhood. Just 5 years after the COVID lockdowns significantly affected many young people’s social worlds and wellbeing… here we go again. Have we thought carefully enough this time about the consequences?

For a long time, governments took little action as digital platforms amassed extraordinary cultural and market power and demonstrated little regard for young people’s wellbeing as those platforms made them the targets of their data, content and advertising strategies. 

Moves like banning young people from social media suggest we’re moving into a new era. Governments are taking actions that attempt to hold digital platforms accountable, and actions like the social media ban have widespread support among Australians. 

To be clear though – in my view, this ban is a blunt and regressive step. 

The challenge for those of us who care about our kids' digital lives is to find ways to seize the popular and political will to push back against platforms that operate only in their commercial interests and channel that energy in progressive directions. We need to ask governments to create rules that acknowledge and protect young people's rights to safe, creative and inclusive digital cultures. 

If we really care about young people’s digital cultures, we need to imagine – together with young people – what good forms of social media look like and hold digital platforms accountable to our values.

Read more from Professor Carah on this topic

When the ban was first announced in 2024, Professor Carah shared thoughts with Contact on whether this was the right move for our community.