This Safer Internet Day, I, like many others, am still grappling with what the looming ban on social media for under 16s means for the e-safety of young people. Even today, the full scope of this legislation is unknown.
Despite its passage, it is likely that young people will still be at risk online. It is only through the kinds of reforms that don’t make the headlines— education programs, moderation tools, and funding programs— that will bring the meaningful change young people need.
The impact of social media
Being born autistic and raised regionally meant that I spent much of my youth attending school online. This meant that many of my social skills were learnt through the wilderness that is online platforms and games.
It meant that my friends mostly lived far away on the other side of the country or the world. It also meant that we understood how to deal with online predators.
One of the biggest problems of being the first generation online, especially when you have used the internet to make your only friends, like I had, was that our parents knew nothing about e-safety or what to do. It meant that there was one thing many people believed above all:
When things go wrong, you don’t tell your parents.
Many of my friends knew what would happen if you were to tell your parents about predators, harassment or bullying online: your parents would simply take your internet access away. Rather than a predator being caught, or a bully being punished, the young person would instead lose their only way to connect with their friends or stay in the loop.
Has anything changed?
As a peer consent educator for the Centre Against Sexual Assault: Central Victoria (CASACV), I had hoped that the tides had turned on e-safety. I had hoped that educational campaigns, like our own Young People as Agents of Change program, had given young people and their families the solid foundations to make the internet a safer place.
Instead, young people told us stories of leaked nudes that they never reported to the police, out of being shamed by their family. LGBTIQA+ young people talked about how they couldn’t tell their parents about predators online, because they would lose access to the social media that gave them safety.
In October 2024, I attended the YACVic consultation on a social media ban for under 16s, when early drafts aimed to punish social media companies to make their platforms safer for young people, rather than a concrete ban.
An MP told us that it didn’t matter that “we know that these restrictions won’t stop young people from accessing social media,” because that wasn’t the goal. But plans changed.
On Friday 29 November, I opened my phone to an article from ABC News— amidst a flurry of 30+ bills, a social media ban for young people under 16 just became law.
Completely different from the consultation process in every way, lacking the technology to make the ban a reality, and according to the ABC, “ignoring advice from a chorus of experts — and from the Australian Human Rights Commission.”
What does this mean for young people?
When I consider the ban on social media, I think about:
- The young people who use the anonymity of the internet to explore their gender identity and sexuality who will be excluded.
- That IDs may be in the hand of social media companies, and how even private information leaking from even Australia’s most secure companies has become a near-monthly occurrence.
- The actors who access this information, who could now tie a digital footprint to a real person.
- How much money a hacker could force a closeted young person to give them if they were threatened with their social media being leaked to their conservative family.
Even the technology behind the law is flawed—YouTube’s facial age verification system is certain that I’m 18, despite what my birth certificate tells me.
Misplaced fear
I am disappointed because it recognises a very real and relevant area of law reform, yet largely misses the mark. Legislation on social media and e-safety for people of all ages has massively fallen behind as rapid changes in social norms, technology, and the usage of online platforms have introduced many new challenges regarding safety and privacy.
Despite the reputation of the early 2000’s internet as an unregulated ‘Wild West’, platforms such as Club Penguin and Animal Jam built their games on the values of child safety and necessarily heavy-handed moderation. These platforms, the highly scattered state of the early internet, and cautious approaches to internet access from parents, made regulation in the space less of a priority than these issues have become in recent years, unfortunately delaying action.
With the shift in online spaces towards centralised social media apps, such as Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and Tumblr, and an increased familiarity with the internet, these issues have again shifted, but the now inescapable shift towards social media as a core aspect of young people’s lives, the social media ban falls short.
Above all else, when I think about that minister that told us that the ban wouldn’t really keep young people off social media, I think about that rule my friends had about not telling their parents. I wonder about what will happen when companies no longer need security measures to account for under 16s being on those platforms, and when those under 16s continue to be there anyway.
When I think about that contradiction— seeking to protect young people, even while acknowledging that the approach used to do so won’t work, I am frustrated. That frustration brings me back to when my friends would lose internet access to be kept safe from alarming content, while that content was left unchallenged.
The issue I take with this bill as a youth advocate is not just its execution, however. It is not just that the bill is rushed, flawed, and lacks technology. It is not the privacy concerns or the loopholes or the FOMO or the social media black market it creates.
If you gave me a version of this law that perfectly prevented all under 16s from accessing social media, with no way around it, I would still stand against it. Why?
"Because this law is like giving every patient in a hospital a band-aid and telling them to go home."
–Natalie
Social media is a tool that can be used for good and for bad, and reform needs to consider that, but this does not.
I think about how my access to social media platforms allowed me to learn essential social skills, make friends, and overcome my crippling anxiety and social isolation.
It’s hard to not be nihilistic when leaving social media contributes to a worsening mental health crisis, and banning it seems to just make things worse. It seems impossible.
But I disagree. Reform on social media is often touted as a wild west, sometimes more-so than the early internet itself— the process is messy and slow and unknown. But it is not impossible to fix. In fact, the more centralised nature of the internet of today makes reform and moderation easier than ever before.
What real reform looks like
- Education programs for parents and kids alike, so that those young kids can feel confident that if things go wrong, they won’t be punished for the actions of others.
- Educational programs in schools to learn about responsible social media use and the risks attached.
- More funding into initiatives like the affirmative consent education workshops I was involved in, to place young people and their families at the centre of conversations, and to cater the tools to the needs of the users through it.
- Investment in programs and platforms that provide safe and well-moderated online spaces for young people to connect and learn.
- Harsher laws on the platforms that already exist, calling for larger moderation teams and stronger security measures to protect all users, young or old.
Australians have every right to be fearful of the impact of social media on young people and adults alike, but we cannot strike out in the name of fear, like this ban does.
It is with care, knowledge, and conviction that we protect young people, not fear. It is out of fear that we fail them.
Natalie is a student and youth advocate specialising in consent education and law reform. She is currently majoring in Criminology, and is invested in embedding agency and lived experience into youth advocacy, as well as challenging the marginalisation of First Nations people within the justice system.