Australia’s social media ban is a high-stakes experiment

Two months ago, Australia implemented a sweeping restriction on teenage social media use. The social media minimum age law bans anyone under 16 from select “social platforms” including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat. It is a massive experiment with high stakes — and one the rest of the world is watching closely as countries in Europe and elsewhere consider similar measures.

To comply with this law, we have locked or disabled more than 415,000 Australian accounts belonging to people we believe are under 16. We continue locking accounts daily and are working with the Australian eSafety Commissioner to meet the requirements prescribed by this law.

Here’s what should concern all of us: compliance with the law does not guarantee that Australian teens will be safer or better off. It’s not yet possible to say for certain. But there are clear gaps that call into question the law’s efficacy and I believe the downsides are going to mount and become more visible over time.

First, the new law regulates only select platforms while leaving thousands of other apps unregulated, meaning it may push teens towards less safe alternatives. When teens lose access to their preferred messaging channel they aren’t going to stop communicating — they are going to find other ways to talk, through lesser-known apps that offer fewer safety protections.

Second, the technical realities are challenging. Australia’s own government trial found that age estimation technology is highly imperfect and often off by two to three years, particularly when it’s applied to younger users. Some under-16s will get through the gate. Some over-16s will be incorrectly locked out. At the scale at which we operate, it will be difficult to achieve 100 per cent accuracy.

Third, stripping teens of this source of connection may not be the healthiest option. Research published in Jama Pediatrics found that moderate social media use appears to support adolescent wellbeing, especially for Australian teens in grades 7-12. According to this research, the optimal approach appears to be thoughtful engagement and moderation, not total prohibition.

Despite this evidence — if governments remain determined to implement strict age restrictions, they should try to do it in a way that minimises gaps in coverage. That’s why we’ve advocated for age verification by app stores instead of individual apps — not because we support under-16 bans, but because if this policy exists it needs to have uniform implementation that safeguards privacy and security for users.

App store-level verification would create one consistent age signal per device and would limit how often personal information must be shared, significantly reducing privacy risks. More importantly, it applies universally across the entire digital ecosystem.

An even better alternative to under-16 age bans would be to help build digital resilience and ensure teens have developmentally appropriate experiences online.

To be clear, I don’t believe Snapchat should be subject to a ban in the first place. I don’t believe cutting teens off from these relationships makes them safer or advances their wellbeing.

Time will be the ultimate arbiter. If Australia’s experiment yields clear evidence that this approach genuinely improves youth wellbeing without creating bigger problems elsewhere, we will of course re-evaluate. Good policy and corporate decisions should follow high-quality evidence.

For now, the world should watch carefully and resist the urge to rush to premature and performative measures. Australia has taken an experimental step, but we won’t know whether it’s the right step for some time. Young people’s health and safety are too important to act on intuition or fear alone.

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