We’ve all heard about the mental health dangers of social media, but few governments have felt compelled to act upon it. On December 10th, many Australian teens will wake up and lose access to their Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and other social media accounts because the government has decided that the companies cannot be trusted to protect the youth from increased loneliness, depression, and isolation that social media has been shown to create.
This ruling came from the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024, a bill that passed through Australia’s federal parliament in late November with a bipartisan majority.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, has already begun removing minors from its platforms. Sources expect that over 500,000 total accounts will be affected throughout this shutdown process.
The Australian government is unwilling to blindly trust these corporations with this policy and has indicated that it’ll closely monitor the shutdown process to ensure enforcement. This stance is expected, given these companies’ historic lack of care for their young user base.
Should companies fail to enforce this with reasonable effort, they’ll face a A$49.5m (US$33m, £25m) fine, though many companies believe that the age-verification responsibility should lie with app distributors like iOS’s App Store or Android’s Google Play.
Despite the government’s strong stance, many teens intend to skirt this update and continue their digital presences. ABC conducted a poll of over 18,000 Australians, and though 25% of “adult” respondents were 67 years old, they still managed to get a glimpse of some students’ attitudes towards the ban.
Through this poll with over 17,000 respondents under 16 years old, 75% said they didn’t intend to stop using these platforms following this ban. This illustrates a major disparity between policymakers’ opinions and students’ voices.
Whether this implementation will go smoothly or be entirely futile remains to be seen. If these companies can successfully update their policies and platforms in a useful way, it’s very likely that more countries will follow Australia’s lead and continue working to improve the digital landscape for young people everywhere.
