Australia's Social Media Ban
- UCL Law for All Society
- Dec 20, 2025
- 3 min read
By Ekin Hizli
This week, Australia introduced a ban on numerous social media platforms for users below the age 16 with the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024. As the legislation went into effect on 10 December 2025, social media platforms including ‘Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Youtube, Snapchat, Reddit, Kick, Twitch and TikTok’ must take action to remove users under the age 16 in Australia from these platforms. As Nic Fildes summarises, the ban aims to protect children against the harm and addiction research identifies that these platforms increasingly cause in the specified age group. Australia becomes the first country to introduce such a ban on social media under 16.
Anthony Albanese, the Prime Minister of Australia, details the new regulation in a national opinion article. Albanese emphasises that this reform was importantly led by the efforts of parents around the nation, who experienced first hand the negative mental health impact social media platforms can create for their children. He also recognises the law as a tool to facilitate discussion around risk, particularly regarding how parents could frame conversations with their kids around the potential harms related to online engagement. This reform serves to extend what would otherwise be ‘a family rule’ into a national regulation, as described by Albanese.
Perhaps most notably, The Guardian reports live reactions from parents and kids a few days following the regulation. While some respondents are bothered more generally about the restriction to their social networks and the communication these platforms enable with peers, many parents are fulfilled with the greater interest their kids show in spending time with family and the safety net this ban creates.
Considering the other parties subject to regulation, the social media platforms confirm that they will follow the regulations, while a few mention their intention to take legal action. Particularly, their shared argument is that their platforms do not primarily function as social networks. In addition, Reddit suggests that there are not many kids using their platform. Youtube elaborates that the platform is a video sharing website. Another central argument is that the subject social media platforms have already integrated numerous parental controls and other safety measures to protect users in this age group. The ban might have the unintended consequence of pushing these users to engage with online content where such safety measures are not in place. In simple economic terms, if these users persistently demonstrate inelastic demand for online engagement, their engagement might be directed to alternative channels rather than reduced or eliminated.
Australian Human Rights Commission presents another perspective on the ban as they recognise ‘the potential for these laws to significantly interfere with the rights of children and young people’. The commission recognises that the ban is aligned with requirements from Article 17 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) as a development of ‘guidelines to protect children from information and material that harms their well-being’. This is in addition to Article 19 where Governments are required to take measures protecting ‘children from violence, abuse, and maltreatment’. On the other hand, the commission questions whether the ban, as a limitation to protect children against online harm, would be ‘lawful, necessary, and proportionate’, putting forward an argument for adopting ‘the least restrictive option available to achieve the intended purpose’. In this context, rather than restricting children's full access to digital information, the regulations should impede information flow that is harmful for children on these platforms, according to the committee. This suggestion is related to other international human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Notably, the commission makes reference to ‘freedom of expression and access to information’, ‘freedom of association and peaceful assembly’, and ‘the right to culture, leisure, and play’.
In its entirety, while developing a normative evaluation of Australia’s social media ban, it is perhaps valuable to consider the extent to which restriction of use protect children from online harm more effectively than improved privacy measures within the subject platforms themselves. In this context, Damini Satija at Amnesty International suggests the regulation should instead focus on more strict regulations on platforms themselves to ‘protect children’s privacy, right to peaceful assembly online, right to health and freedom of expression’. In this context, independent of the form of regulation put in place, Satija rightly emphasises that education and other tools to ensure safe social media engagement for users should be prioritised by the government, primarily as a form of empowerment for young participants in these social media platforms.
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Edited by Artyom Timofeev
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