Social Media Age Ban: Protection or Overreach?

From December 2025, Australian teenagers under the age of 16 will be legally barred from the world’s most popular social media platforms. The move, which has been hailed by the government as a landmark step in child safety, will force tech companies to verify users’ ages and shut out millions of young Australians from platforms they’ve grown up using.

The intentions are understandable, and clearly aimed at benefiting young people. Social media has long been linked to poor sleep, heightened stress, and attention problems, not to mention the risks of exposure to harmful and disurbing content. The immersive design of these platforms: infinite scrolling, rabbit holes, dopamine-inducing notifications, is tailored to keep users hooked, and youth are especially vulnerable to these effects. For many parents, the idea of reducing social media’s influence over their children will be a welcome relief.

Concerns with the Ban

Yet the law also opens a Pandora’s box of questions. To even attempt to enforce the ban, platforms will need to collect and verify personal information, potentially in the form of government IDs or biometric scans. This raises real concerns about privacy and data security. Will 15-year-olds have to submit face scans to Instagram? And what happens if and when that data is breached?

What happens if and when that data is breached?

While this law targets the platforms, attempting to shift responsibility away from parents and children, it doesn’t change the reality that tech-savvy teenagers can and will find new ways to circumvent even these newest restrictions, whether by using VPNs, fake accounts, or foreign-based apps. A frightening and unintended result could be a fragmented online landscape where vulnerable youths migrate to unregulated corners of the internet, beyond the reach of Australian law, content guidelines, and parental oversight.

Another, perhaps somewhat overlooked consequence, is cultural. In 2025, the world looks incredibly different to how it did even just a decade ago. Today, social media is not just a pastime; it’s the dominant channel for communication, self-expression, and engagement between young people, many of whom have quite literally grown up in that ecosystem. There can be no doubt that removing or restricting that access now will fundamentally change the way entire generations interact, significantly altering how youth build and maintain friendships. For now, who can say if it will be for the better or worse.

Beyond just friendships, there is another question, that of what becomes of youth civic engagement, and how would the ban impact the way information is shared among the demographic? Social media has long served as a sort of gateway through which young teens first engage and participate in political movements, discover art and music, and access news outside of traditional channels. Completely removing that access risks isolating them from an entire section of public life that, by now, they are fully entrenched in.

A Difficult Issue

It is abundantly clear that the motivation here is noble, but the execution may still be flawed, which is hardly surprising given the incredibly difficult nature of the issue. Child safety matters, undoubtedly, and should always be a key concern. But it is far from the only thing that matters. So does privacy, freedom, and trust. This new law may protect, but in some ways may also overreach, and who can predict what unintended consequences we may soon see.