“A law that restricts social media use to people 16 and over goes into effect in December, but much about it remains unclear or undecided.
Australia has long been one of the most proactive countries in the world in trying to police the internet. It has clashed with Elon Musk over violent videos and child exploitation on X, forced Google and Facebook to pay for news, and tried to filter out large swaths of online content.
Its latest aim may be the most herculean yet. By December, the country wants to remove more than a million young teens from social media, under a groundbreaking law that sets a minimum age of 16 to use the platforms.
But with fewer than six months before the new regulation goes into effect, much about its implementation remains unclear or undecided.
YouTube, which young teens in Australia report using more than any other service, may or may not be covered by the law. The authorities have yet to lay out the parameters of what social media companies need to do to comply, and what would constitute a violation, which could lead to fines of $30 million or more. The government has studied how to verify users’ ages but has not released the full results of an extensive trial.
“We may be building the plane a little bit as we’re flying it,” Julie Inman Grant, the commissioner of online safety who is tasked with enforcing the law, said in a nationally televised address last month. “I’m very confident we can get there.”
The law could have far-reaching influence if Australia can succeed in getting substantial numbers of teens off social media. Several governments around the world and in various U.S. states are in the process of or planning to impose their own rules on social media for young people, as alarm over their mental health impacts and addictive nature has reached a fever pitch.
Passed late last year, the Australian law was billed as one of the first nationwide endeavors aimed at getting children off social media.
In May, New Zealand introduced legislation closely modeled on the Australian one, which puts the onus of verifying users’ ages on the social media platforms. In June, President Emmanuel Macron of France said he wanted to bar children under 15 from social media within months.
The questions that remain unsettled in Australia should be a sign to other countries of the thorny path ahead — starting with how to define social media.
In Australia, the authorities had initially planned to exempt YouTube from the law. But the online safety agency last month advised that it should not be excluded, noting that it was the most popular platform — used by three-quarters of 10- to 15-year-olds — and had features that could lead to excessive use, like infinite scroll and short-form videos.
YouTube has strongly objected to the recommendation, saying that it was a video streaming platform rather than a social media service, and that more than four out of five teachers use its videos in the classroom.
In an interview, Ms. Inman Grant said her office began consultations last week with tech companies to set expectations on what “reasonable steps” they need to take to comply with the law.
The companies will have to demonstrate, to her satisfaction, that they are doing enough to identify underage users and remove their accounts. They will also have to provide ways parents or teachers can flag accounts belonging to people under 16; show that they are countering attempts at circumvention, such as through a VPN; and prove they are tracking the efficacy of their methods, she said.
Even if not every underage account is immediately purged from all platforms, she said, the law being in place will lead to change in the right direction.
“This is one of the biggest questions of our time, the intersection of social media and children’s mental health,” Ms. Inman Grant said.
Some of tech company officials who are working on carrying out the law said that more than halfway through the year, they were still waiting on the government to define the “yard stick” by which they would be evaluated.
Meta, for its part, has already invested in developing technologies to understand users’ age and created separate teen accounts with safeguards, Joanna Stevens, a spokeswoman for the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, said in a statement.
Critics of the law have pointed out that it has numerous blind spots. For instance, it does not address the content that children are able to access without being logged into an account; it only specifies that underage users should be prevented from having accounts.
Axel Bruns, a professor of communications and media at the Queensland University of Technology, said that in requiring tech companies to find a way to keep children out through unspecified means, rather than requiring them to better moderate harmful content, the government was choosing to “go down the sledgehammer way,” he said.
“It’s a bit like saying we want to have this magical technology — if you don’t come up with it, then it’s your fault,” he said. “It’s law as wishful thinking, essentially.”” [1]
Consideringthat electronic media usage is addictive and reduces chances of humanity’ssurvival, we should introduce a law that restricts electronic media use to people 45 and over (the end of usual reproductive age). The losses of electronic media giants will be not critical since young people have very limited amount of money to spend.
Such a law to restrict electronic media usage to individuals aged 40 and over, based on concerns about addiction and its impact on humanity's survival, presents both potential benefits and significant drawbacks
.
Potential Benefits (according to the proposed law's advocates):
Protecting Youth: Proponents argue that restricting access would shield younger individuals from the negative effects of electronic media, such as potential addiction, cyberbullying, exposure to harmful content, and the risks of online predation.
Promoting Healthier Development: Limiting exposure during critical developmental stages could encourage engagement in offline activities essential for healthy physical, cognitive, and emotional growth, formation of families and humanity’s reproduction.
Encouraging Digital Literacy: A delayed introduction might allow time for better digital education and parental guidance to prepare young people for responsible online engagement.
Potential Drawbacks and Challenges:
Enforcement Difficulties: Implementing and enforcing such an age restriction would be challenging, as age verification methods can be easily bypassed or raise privacy concerns. AI as a great technology for pattern recognition could halp to identify the users age.
Restricting Beneficial Opportunities: Social media can offer valuable learning, self-expression, and community-building opportunities, especially for marginalized youth. All these things are better done with real human beings.
Driving Underground Use: Restricting access might push younger individuals toward less regulated online spaces, potentially increasing risks. AI should control any electronic media device introduced into the market.
Impact on Digital Literacy: Limiting early exposure could hinder the development of essential digital skills needed in today's world.
Ethical Concerns: Restricting access based solely on age raises concerns about potential discrimination and limiting the rights to information and expression. Electronic media usage leads to the suicide of humanity. Many societies restrict suicidal behavior.
Undermining Children's Rights: Such restrictions could limit access to educational or health resources and supportive online communities. Go to real humans for that.
Negative Impact on Businesses: Social media platforms rely on revenue generated from users across all age groups, and limiting access to younger users would likely impact their business models. No people at all means no business at all. That is much worse.
Economic Impact: While the proposed law suggests young people have limited spending power, they still contribute to the digital economy through engagement and data. Survival of humanity is more important though.
In summary, protecting young people from the potential harms of electronic media is a valid concern. Pornography industry's legal problems show that you can limit access to electronic media based on age even today before development of AI tools to determine user's age.
1. Australia Wants to Bar Children From Social Media. Can It Succeed? Kim, Victoria. New York Times (Online) New York Times Company. Jul 6, 2025.
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