Most Australian Teens Still On Social Media Three Months After Ban (reuters.com)
- Reference: 0184793546
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/07/31/2024233/most-australian-teens-still-on-social-media-three-months-after-ban
- Source link: https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/most-australian-teens-still-social-media-three-months-after-under-16-ban-began-2026-07-31/
> In a study published on Friday, eSafety also found most children aged between 10 and 15 were using social media just as frequently in March as they had before the ban came into force on December 10 last year, while parental awareness of their habits decreased. Children's continued social media use took place even as account ownership declined to 42% from 52%, with "statistically significant" reductions across YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok in particular, the report said.
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> "Most under-16s who had social media accounts before commencement were able to either retain them or create new ones at the three-month mark, with social media platforms' failure to implement effective age assurance measures cited as the main reason," eSafety said in a statement [...] Before the ban, nearly 86% of children surveyed reported using at least one age-restricted platform. Three months later, that figure remained above 81%, the report said. About 58% of teenagers reported using social media daily or more often, barely down from roughly 60% before the ban, it found. The report showed minimal change in "sports and physical activity, arts and music, spending time with friends and family, and attendance at community events."
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> Around half the children who retained their accounts said platforms had not checked their age, the most common reason they were able to stay on the services. Others said their accounts listed them as aged 16 or older or that age-checking systems had incorrectly determined they were older. The findings broadly matched snapshot data eSafety published in late March.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/most-australian-teens-still-social-media-three-months-after-under-16-ban-began-2026-07-31/
[2] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/12/09/2112230/millions-of-australian-teens-lose-access-to-social-media-as-ban-takes-effect
Yeah (Score:1)
Instead of holding the companies accountable, you are trying to hold the people accountable
We do that on drugs, how is that working out for everyone?
Re: Yeah (Score:4, Informative)
A web search says that's false.
Re: (Score:2)
Given the state of web searches these days, that actually argues that it's true.
Re:Yeah (Score:5, Interesting)
They really should start holding parents accountable for buying age inappropriate things for their kids. Here in FL, the public schools in Orange County recently just instituted a ban on e-bikes and e-scooters, because a significant number of kids were flouting the traffic laws, riding without helmets, and some parents were actually buying e-motorcycles for their brats. I thought giving your kid a phone with unrestricted internet access was irresponsible enough, but someone's always gotta come along and say "Hold my beer!"
On one side you've got parents flipping out because the school library might have a book buried somewhere within the shelves that says trans people exist. On the other, there's parents buying their kids smartphones with unrestricted internet access, and frickin' motorcycles. The duality of parents is a strange, strange thing.
Clueless parents (Score:4, Funny)
> In a study published on Friday, eSafety also found most children aged between 10 and 15 were using social media just as frequently in March as they had before the ban came into force on December 10 last year, while parental awareness of their habits decreased.
If you bought a smartphone/tablet for your kid, what do you think they're using it for, crushing walnuts?
It was never about "the kids" (Score:5, Insightful)
Banning teens from social media will never be widely successful - Because it doesn't need to be.
These laws have nothing to do with protecting kids, and everything to do with stripping adults of their privacy. The kids will find workarounds like VPNs or AI generated IDs, because they have no alternative; meanwhile most adults will grudgingly hand over their ID cards and subject themselves to completely untrustworthy biometric tomfoolery rather than go cold-turkey from their daily doom scrolling.
And the world gets worse for all of us.
Don't know about Australia (Score:3)
In America taking away social media from your kids would be pretty fucked up. At least assuming you can't either taxi cab them around town, buy them a car and get them a license or pay for a shitload of taxi rides
That's because the suburbs have basically spread us out to such a ridiculous degree that kids don't have a lot of opportunities to socialize. And no school doesn't really count you get maybe a half hour for lunch.
Hell people have been talking about how suburbs isolate people for ages. And it's only gotten worse. Back when my kid was in high school they were a good 40 minutes away from their closest Friend by bus. By car it was something like 10 minutes but like most places my city's bus system sucks balls. And when you have two or three hours of homework a night minimum sometimes as much as four or five that's just not going to cut it.
I suspect it was less of a problem for us old farts because not only were a lot of us in denser living conditions but even if we weren't we didn't have the crazy amounts of homework that modern kids get. Admittedly it's been years since my kids have been in high school but as far as I know that hasn't changed and kids still get multiple hours of homework a night despite all research showing that doing that's very counterproductive... More of the puritanical bullshit you just can't shake from our shitty culture.
So pretty much the only place your kids get to socialize unless you are very well off or they are very lucky is going to be on social media.
We could of course do away with the suburbs and make walkable cities but the car companies are worth tens of billions of dollars so there sure is shit not going to let us do that even if you could convince old people who are hung up on cars to do it
I suspect that old people are just going to keep grinding their kids into dust. Honestly I think most of us didn't want to have the little shits anyway. Men want sex and women want babies.
Re: (Score:2)
Okay, that's just lazy talk, and making excuses. If people aren't interacting in person then it's not due to distance, it's from conditioning.
Re: (Score:2)
You forgot to throw in a "back in my day".
This is why young people hate us old farts. Things have changed from when we were Young and we refused to acknowledge that and blame young people for the problems we caused them. And when they become maladapted because of all the dumb shit we dumped on them we get even angrier that they didn't turn out the way we wanted them to. Which is especially fucking hilarious because it was our job to raise them.
Meanwhile you completely misunderstood my comment. Or yo
Re: (Score:2)
> In America taking away social media from your kids would be pretty fucked up. At least assuming you can't either taxi cab them around town, buy them a car and get them a license or pay for a shitload of taxi rides
No grandpa, kids go tear assing around [1]on their e-bikes now. [wftv.com]
Ironically, Florida does have a social media ban for under 14s, but it's mostly toothless. So, I wouldn't be to quick to jump to the conclusion that these troublemakers did this because their doomscrolling was taken away.
[1] https://www.wftv.com/news/local/teen-e-bike-takeover-downtown-orlando-leads-charges-police-say/ZBW2JLXZDJCQRN7M5JWUKZN3OE/
Re: (Score:1)
Except social media is not socializing. It's an excuse for not socializing. That's exactly why it's popular with kids and adults.
Well colour me surprised! (Score:2)
Like, were we expecting anything different?
Most, but... (Score:2)
... only the cool ones.
If everyone does not have a required foolproof (Score:2)
government ID mechanism then this won't work!
And if there is a government ID mechanism that works then there is no anonymity or privacy because the
government and corporations are incapable of keeping information secure and/or not using it to attack their
opponents(political and business) for power and profit.
Wrong approach (Score:3)
Better approach is to ban the business models used by social media that make them so addictive and harmful. And if a social media business does not comply, fine it 100% of its revenues in your jurisdiction.
If they still don't comply, request Zelensky to pull a Wildberry trimming operation on their data centers.
It's the social media companies who are the evil ones here, not the users who need age-restricting.
Re: (Score:2)
This.
Ban the practices, not the platform. We know about the harmful practices, make them change the apps.
eSafety more like eDumbass (Score:1)
> with social media platforms' failure to implement effective age assurance measures cited as the main reason," eSafety said in a statement
Because there *aren't* any effective age assurance measures that exist, you stupid fucking cow.
Looks like a great success (Score:4, Insightful)
Despite being poorly implemented by platforms nearly 20% of kids have stopped, and so soon after the laws were enacted? This seems to have worked better than expected. A few fines in the direction of Facebook and Google will improve these numbers further.
Then you just need to wait. When smoking was banned for under 18s the day after they still smoked as well. These days smoking is rare. The current generation is a lost cause, they'll VPN their phone addicted brains to get their daily fix of TikTok if they need to (my niece in Australia is the type of person who would watch two twitch streams in parallel and then have a mild panic when someone asks her to put the phone away at the dinner table, it's insane).
The next generation now stands a chance. People are less likely to join social media as a new customer if they need to jump through hoops to do so.
Re: (Score:2)
> Despite being poorly implemented by platforms nearly 20% of kids have stopped
You need to read better. 86% usage before the ban, 81% usage after the ban. 5% stopped - depending the margins of error on each survey.
> When smoking was banned for under 18s the day after they still smoked as well. These days smoking is rare.
In AU, this is only because of gov strict import control of tobacco and the fact that if a teen is caught with cigarettes, they are also punished in some form. A teen caught on social media in AU is not punished. There is no incentive, or reason, for teens to respect the ban.
> if they need to jump through hoops to do so.
A VPN, which is all you need to defeat any of these bans, isn't really a hoop to jump through. They'r
Re: (Score:1)
> You need to read better. 86% usage before the ban, 81% usage after the ban. 5% stopped - depending the margins of error on each survey.
Plus what percentage of the 5% said they stopped, but didn't?
Australia has always been a nanny state. Australian politicians think the average Australian is a moron that needs to be protected from themselves. Zero respect for the power of the free market. Anything that anyone considers a vice (or even just slightly bad for your health) is either banned or effectively banned through extreme taxation.
We should vote in Pauline Hansen / One Nation (Trump-style populists) to send a message that we are not goi
Re: (Score:2)
Cut off your nose to spite your face, eh? That worked out well for the Americans.... Or the Brits....
Re: (Score:2)
That worked out well for the Americans. Of-course it did. Sending all those Trotsky-slut collectivists to the Utah barb-wire gulag lifted a great weight from the shoulders of American yeomanry. We even remembered to kill MOST of the rattlesnakes in those gulag sleeping tents. Now about scorpions who just love jabbing fentanyl-laced progressive skin I cannot say.
Re: (Score:1)
> These days smoking is rare.
Really? Where do you live?
None of this matters (Score:3)
None of these laws matter. The banned population is smart and even if VPNs stop working they will find a way around the ban - like joining Vk or something similar. I'd like to see the Australians impose their demands on the Russians on this one...
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
What has free speech got to do with minors using a product or service?
What next, you think kids should smoke because of free speech?