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Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

reuters.com

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Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#581

Post by immibis »

andrewinardeer wrote: post #175
rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #72

Why ban social media when ad-supported media is the culprit? Remove the incentive (to get users to doom scroll, to polarize, to impulse buy…) and you change the behavior. I remember when social media was sane 15+ years ago. The problem is the business model, not socializing. It's crazy to ban it when being a teen is the beginning of socializing!

It's crazy that social media is banned but kids are still subject to gambling ads prior to or after watching the footy on free to air TV.

Can they gamble?

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#582

Post by ncruces »

phantasmish wrote: post #437
indymike wrote: post #406

Father of five here, and founder of a social media marketing company (exited). Our kids are up against problems we didn't have during the great expansion of social. The three big things: 1. State level actors and well funded not for profits are fighting an information war to influence our kids. And they are very good at it. Down to having troll farms to talk one on one. Every time something new happens in the world,…

I'm not sure why a person would want to let their kids hang out any place where that stuff you report is common, if it's at all possible to avoid it. I'm gonna continue to run with "no social media", which has worked so far. They can message people they actually know IRL, somewhere without a feed full of crap from people they don't know. That's plenty. Like I can't think of any analogous place in physical space I'd l…

> They can message people they actually know IRL, somewhere without a feed full of crap from people they don't know.

Just how do you think they get introduced to TikTok? What do you think gets posted in the school class WhatsApp group chat?

My kids' WhatsApp group chats are mostly a torrent of sharing idiotic TikToks, YouTube Shorts, and celebrity Instagrams.

Which my kids can't watch… until they're savvy enough to bypass my restrictions. Until then, they'll watch it in school, on their friends' phones - little consolation there.

And when that pauses, they just have stupid sticker wars, and the kind of impolite banter (often misogynist/homophobic in nature, definitely not age appropriate) that may well have been par for the course when I was their age, but that I would never have committed to in writing, in essentially a public space. Not to mention the almost bullying.

The mere suggestion by my kid (on my advice) that a separate space was created to discuss actually important stuff, like forgotten homework assignments, test dates, etc, was met with incredulity and laughter by peers (the almost bullying).

Kids teach their peers how to act. Peers have way more influence than their parents. We need a majority of kids to understand TikTok/etc are bad for them.

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#583

Post by steve_taylor »

jl6 wrote: post #106

Is the mechanism of the ban actually going to work, or is it just going to train more kids how to use fake IDs and VPNs?

It doesn't have to be that effective. The point was to get the law passed. Now that it's in effect, there will be iterative steps to make it effective. I think it will eventually lead to all social media users in Australia having to authenticate with their Digital ID, which will be made available to private sector integrators in the 2nd half of 2026.

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#584

Post by chris_wot »

samename wrote: post #483
bigfudge wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The attempt is to remove the market do exploiting the attention of children for profit. This doesn’t have to be perfect to be worth it. What’s more, the idea that this puts children at the mercy of authoritarians is laughable. The US tech industry has shown us beyond doubt that they are perfectly ok with genuine authoritarians in charge, provided the dollars keep rolling. Fuck them, and good on ya Australia.

What about future governments in Australia? This is ripe for abuse and scope creep. It also ties a uniform ID to an account, simplifying tracking and surveillance by corporations and governments. Plus, this is asking everyone in the country to give up their biometrics (face scanning is one implementation) or link your government issued ID to your social media account (look at the UK to see how this turned out - peopl…

You can't link your government ID to your social media account. The legislation doesn't allow social media companies to gather this data. It's specifically not allowed.

In other words: this legislation is useless, and entirely stupid, and kids will bypass it trivially. Teenagers are exceptionally good at bypassing that which they find stupid, or gets in their way of what they consider to be fun, or a right.

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#585

Post by energy123 »

feb012025 wrote: post #161

I feel like everyone in this thread is assuming this is a good faith move by Australia to help kids in school and with socialization. I think phones and social media are harmful, but I get the sense there's a political motive behind this. We've been hearing politicians complain for years that they're losing the youth when it comes to long-standing foreign policy positions, etc... And suddenly they ban social media. R…

70-74% of voters in Australia and the UK want this. It's also a bipartisan legislation. It has nothing to do with a conspiracy among politicians.

It's not just about the kids either. People know those kids are going to grown up and impact them one day. An avalanche of broken people is not conducive to what I want on a purely selfish level as a non-parent.

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#586

Post by steve_taylor »

The real news is that age verification will be required to use a search engine from the 27th. This has flown completely under the radar because of the social media ban.

Initially, it will only be required if you're logged in. Obviously that won't be effective, so the next logical step would be to require that everyone logs in to use a search engine.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-11/age-verification-sear...

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#588

Post by [deleted] »

roenxi wrote: post #459
zmmmmm wrote: post #405

A lot of the criticism is based on the concept that it won't be technically watertight. But the key is that it doesn't have to be watertight to work. Social media is all about network effects. Once most kids are on there, everyone has to be on there. If you knock the percentage down far enough, you break the network effect to the point where those who don't want to don't feel pressured to. If that is all it does, it'…

Well, yes but the other problem is this is putting authoritarians in charge of more stuff. I had a comment comparing this to allowing people to eat too much food and that is literally where the logical outcome of this sort of thinking goes - it happens in practice, that isn't some sort of theoretical risk. The more the government decides what people can and can't want to do the worse the potential gets when they make…

[deleted]

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#589

Post by energy123 »

skwee357 wrote: post #408

The next step is to outlaw social media in general, and maybe the world will become a bit better. Edit: in case someone decides to disagree with me, here is a non-exhaustive list of issues that social media has created: isolation from the real world, unrealistic expectations in terms of looks/status/success, dehumanization by turning people into likes-dislikes, dehumanizations by creating influencers whose sole purpo…

I would start by outlawing the algorithmic feed. Force them to show a chronological timeline of who you follow with no influence from likes, no For You feed, basically no algorithmic recommendation engine.

You probably solve most of the problems with 10% of the legal/social/implementation difficulty.

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#590

Post by bigfatkitten »

eviks wrote: post #45
bigfatkitten wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing has changed for my 15 year old either. It’s business as usual today for her. She says only one of her friends has been challenged by a platform so far, and that was by Snapchat. That friend got another 14 year old friend to pass the facial age detection check on her behalf.

Interesting, was she unable to pass the test just didn't even risk it, thinking the algo is good and can reliably detect reality?

She failed on the first attempt, handed her phone to the friend to try, and then the friend passed.
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