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Three months into Australia’s world-first social media ban for under-16s, has it been a success?
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
33 points (92.3% liked)
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Nah, it was the point I think. The people who wanted it were genuinely concerned with the welfare of kids and there was evidence to support that the big tech companies are predatory and doing immense harm.
The problem is that having good intentions is never enough. Someone is going to take the opportunity to further their own aims. There is a huge mass surveillance industry backed by people like Peter Thiel that will take full advantage of ID requirements to increase their grip on power
Not only is our political class not smart enough to see the dangers and legislate to protect us, but many have already been lobbied by the surveillance industry.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if the orgs that have been pushing the message to protect kids from social media were either part funded or infiltrated by the mass surveillance industry. But I do believe there are people genuine in their concern about social media harms. Many parents put their foot down on this long ago, but unfortunately most did not.
The government didn’t want it to protect the kids. Some in the community misguidedly think it’s necessary, but they were just the scapegoats for the governments authoritarian desires.
It's a bit of a stretch to say that the government benefits from asking private companies to verify the ages of their users. Those private companies don't necessarily share their data with the government, and in most cases the information to verify ages isn't necessary useful to the anyway.
Consider TikTok for example. Users of tiktok already routinely upload videos of themselves. So the Australian government telling TikTok that they should also ask for a face photo to verify a person's age... well... I don't think the government or tiktok would really care about collecting that face photo.
Some companies might like the excuse to ask for personal information, but I think the biggest most powerful ones do not want it; because they already have the data they want, and the laws could shrink their userbase.
There is a lot of talk about "ID requirements", but I think it's worth noting that the Australian laws explicitly require that companies must provide a verification method that does not require the scan of any ID card. That's an interesting clause to include if the purpose was to allow companies to collect people's ID information.
So no - I don't think there is any secret motive to the laws. There are a lot of parents (and kids too) that believe restricting social media is a good idea; and that's what the laws are meant to do. Whether it is helpful or harmful is separate question though.
That wasn’t the purpose. The purpose was to condition people to requiring verification to use things. That way when the inevitable digital ID comes along, people will already be used to having to authenticate themselves to access websites and services, so there won’t be as much pushback.
Parents should be in charge of monitoring/limiting their kids access to social media, not the government. That’s kinda a parents job - raising your children. It’s not the governments job.