While Aussie under-16s social media ban lags in account deletions, nations line up to give it a crack

International governments are moving quickly to replicate Australia’s landmark social media ban, despite a lack of data on its effectiveness, tech-savvy teens finding easy workarounds, and relying heavily on parental enforcement.

Despite drawing interest from 25 nations and five million deactivations in the six months since it launched, parents and teachers report little real-world difference with older teens easily bypassing the ban.

There’s only been a 37 per cent reduction in the number of Aussie under-16s holding accounts with widespread loopholes including some platforms allowing multiple age verification chances or weak barriers to entry.

While parents and experts view the ban as a social experiment, many agree it is worth trying given the urgent demand to get children off their devices.

Ocean Reef mum Kelly Jarvis is among parents who feel they are carrying the burden of enforcement, despite the ban requiring tech companies to protect young users.

Ms Jarvis said her 13-year-old girl and 16-year-old boy had quickly figured out the workarounds but her and her husband decided to “take the lead” to block their daughter from TikTok or Instagram or Snapchat to help her mental health.

“I think at the start it was a good thing. At the end of the day children shouldn’t have that constant barrage of content that they view online,” she said.

“But when push really came to shove nothing happened. My children didn’t get kicked off, nothing really changed.

“We ended up taking the lead with my daughter. She has quite bad anxiety and I only saw it getting worse the more plugged in she was.

“She is definitely happier, and I would say she is much more in control.”

Several parents described an uphill enforcement battle, with kids openly boasting about using cat filters and fake moustaches to beat the system, while other parents simply let their children bypass the rules.

It includes 10 platforms — YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, TikTok, Twitch, Snapchat, Reddit, and Kick.

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant raised concerns during a Senate Estimates hearing last month about one app which allowed 24 age-verification attempts each day.

The Kids Research Institute’s Professor Kathryn Modecki, who is leading a study into the impact of the ban, said while there’s plenty of political will — there was still a lack of empirical data that it was working.

The study has surveyed 2600 parents of children aged 9-12 before the ban and will measure them again in August to understand its effectiveness and how it might have changed behaviour.

She said it was important for policymakers globally to take “the emotion out of it” and review evidence that a ban would work.

“Everyone wants kids to be safer and better and I think it is sometimes easy to lose track of that because it is a very emotive space,” she said.

“We’re taking some of the emotional element out of it. We’re looking at it with a scientific approach to say either ‘yes, this worked’ or ‘no it didn’t’.”

Professor Modecki said she was also fielding calls from across the global as other nations or jurisdictions try to follow suit.

Keir Starmer’s proposed Australian-style social media ban this week was seen by many as a last-ditch effort to save his political skin — but it had also marked the latest in a global trend against big tech.

From Tonga to Mongolia and Ghana, unlikely international partners have sought advice.

Ministerial level meetings with Communication Minister Anika Wells have so far included at least nine nations, while 16 nations have engaged with her department over the roll out.

Despite the legal headaches and tech lobbyist onslaught Australia has battled through, almost 10 nations have or announced they will introduce similar legislation around restricting teens.

Those following efforts to stop the endless scroll includes Malaysia, Indonesia, France, Brazil, Spain, Greece and Denmark.

Canada has been the latest to ride the global wave. Ottawa introduced a suite of measures on Thursday and created a new online safety regular role like Ms Inman Grant’s.

It comes after Australia’s watchdog first consulted Canadian stakeholders in 2019, with further engagements in 2022 and before providing submissions to their Parliament in the past year on the ban and AI safety regulation.

But under Ottawa’s planned online harms bill, companies which met the standards could still apply to have kids back on their platforms.

It’s one of several international approaches to policy that have strayed from Australia, with foreign governments drawing lessons from Down Under.

Britain’s proposed ban will have more nuanced restrictions, focusing on certain features of social media for different age groups.

It followed the conclusion of a three month consultation period, which found that outright bans on social media are not an effective way to reduce online harms for young people — despite strong parental support for it.

Professor Modecki said it made sense if nation’s were reading from Australia’s playbook in order to avoid the enforcement headaches the global guinea pig has already faced.

Ms Inman Grant’s efforts have drawn at least six taxpayer-funded legal challenges from Elon Musk’s X platform among other cases.

Australia’s internet regulator had, however, been the only successful jurisdiction in the world which has had a win against X when the platform was ordered to pay a $650,000 fine for wrongdoing with $100,000 court costs in the Federal court in May.

Online chat forum Reddit has also lodged a High Court challenge to the ban alongside a similar case by two teen plaintiffs from Sydney linked to the advocacy group Digital Freedom Project.

Even in the early days, Ms Inman Grant had her doubts. She’s previously admitted that she didn’t like the idea when the government first came to her proposing a blanket ban.

Just last week Ms Inman Grant had told the Sydney Morning Herald that she believes the legislation was drafted “very quickly” and with a “very blunt approach”.

“If you’re going to take on the biggest technology companies in the world … it’s not like you’re sticking a pink parking ticket on a windshield,” she said when asked if she had enough powers as a regulator.

“What I would say is a regulator is only as good as the tools and the resources that they’re given.”

While European nations are clearly intent on implementing their own bans, their approach has been fragmented across different age groups and restrictions

The EU is pushing for a unified strategy, which Ursula von der Leyen highlighted during her historic address to the Australian Parliament earlier this year.

A spokeswoman from eSafety told The West many of the “foundational pillars” their department had created was showing up in legislation globally.

She said engagements with governments and regulators across the world had including countries across Asia, the Pacific, North America and the UK and Europe “to share lessons about Australia’s experience”.

“eSafety has experienced significant global interest in the world’s first social media minimum age legislation, including the journey to implementation, compliance and beyond,” she said.

“The purpose of these engagements is often at the request of legislative bodies, policy departments or fellow regulators. eSafety does not seek to comment on or influence policy or the legislative decisions of other governments.

“eSafety recognises that building a safer online world requires a community wide effort, including collaboration with other regulators and governments internationally.”

Despite the political momentum, some critics still believe the global response is lagging.

Former UK safeguarding minister Jess Phillips resigned from her role in April insisting that Sir Keir had dragged his feet on the ban.

However, UK Minister for AI and Online Safety Kanishka Narayan was the latest to meet with Ms Wells to discuss Australia’s approach.

Ministerial engagements have also been held with Canada, Denmark, Indonesia, Ireland, Malaysia, Norway, Sweden and the UAE.

While at a departmental level, Australia has engaged with some unlikely international partners.

It includes Mongolia, Ghana, Mauritius and Mexico, as well as the EU, France, Greece, Canada and the United States.

Asia-Pacific nations interested have included Fiji, Kiribati, Tonga, Solomon Islands, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, and New Zealand.

Curtin University internet studies professor Tama Leaver said the UK appeared to be adopting a more targeted approach rather than a blanket ban.

But he cautioned that British politicians were still “paying lip service” rather than presenting a fully worked through policy.

It had taken just eight days for the Australian Parliament to pass the legislation, and with a less than 24 hours request for submissions.

Professor Leaver said often it appeared like Australia was making policy on the run, citing a change to guidelines earlier this year to more explicitly target addictive features like endless video scroll.

The more refined definition had come just hours before a High Court appearance.

But to date, still no social media organisations have been hit with a fine of up to $49.5 million for violations.

Several school principals told The Nightly the bans had made no difference in a secondary school, with most kids finding ways around the ban.

Craig Thomas from Perth’s St Stephen’s School told The Nightly that teachers had been “surprised” that more children hadn’t been kicked off platforms.

“We’ve all been a little bit surprised by the fact that there’s been so many students still able to access it,” he said.

“We were hoping that the kids would re-engage with physical connection and getting involved in more clubs.”

He said there had been less reports of cyber bullying since the ban but that it wasn’t yet clear if that was because it either wasn’t as prevalent or kids were reporting less in fear they would get told off for being on banned apps.

“Certainly what we’re getting reported from our pastoral team is that some of the things that we were having reported previously, we’re seeing less of that,” he said.

“We’re not 100 per cent confident that that’s the true picture. There’s still a lot of kids that are able to access it, so it’s not a true indication, unfortunately.

“Some of the education we’re doing with students is trying to remind them that ‘hey look, you’re actually not the people that are doing the wrong thing’.

“We’re certainly trying to create an environment where the students are happy to keep coming forward and reporting and sharing.”

While it hasn’t completely removed her 12 and 15-year-olds from social media, Duncraig mum Joanne Barry said the ban was a “success” for reinforcing that kids shouldn’t be on social media.

“The ban made it easier for us as parents. It helped us reinforce the message that social media isn’t something our children need.

“Before it came in, there were constant conversations about why our daughter couldn’t have social media and the risks we thought were involved.

“Once the ban was in place, it was simply, ‘Well, you can’t’. It gave us a full stop on that conversation. Rather than having to justify our decision over and over again.”

While believing the ban’s rollout was rushed without a clear enforcement plan and leaving a lot for parents to pick up, Ms Barry welcomed that it had removed unrealistic online standards on kids.

“It felt like they announced it before anyone really knew how it was going to work,” she said.

“Parents still have an important role in setting expectations and boundaries.”

But its not just parents who have been watching how the ban has been received in Australia, with 26-year-old Jemma Nickels hopeful it could help keep her 14-year-old brother away from toxic manosphere content.

In her experience, the ban hasn’t worked.

“Some of the stuff I saw him watching was concerning, and in a way, it is almost radicalisation. Andrew Tate, people like that,” she said.

“It probably hasn’t been the most successful in the fact that he hasn’t been kicked off social media, but it is a good legislation to have to remind him that legally, he isn’t supposed to be on it in the first place.”

However, Australia’s peak national body for children and young people with disabilities noted that some neurodivergent teenagers felt more isolated following the ban after being stripped of their online communities.

Youth Disability Advocacy Network chief executive Skye Kakoschke-Moore some families felt the ban disproportionately harms children and young people with disability.

“Rather than making this space safer, the ban is only isolating under-16s with disability further or creating unwieldy roadblocks for legal adults,” she said.

Professor Leaver said teens were still findings ways around the ban or just turning to chat-based forums like WhatsApp which are excluded.

“The majority of the teens that this was supposed to affect have not actually been affected as far as we can tell yet,” Professor Leaver said.

“There’s been a number of smaller surveys that have found that for the most part young people either were not removed from any platforms.

“It has provoked real change globally though and a real sense that this could be done when many countries just believed it wasn’t possible in the past.

“But it’s also true that the actual implementation of it in Australia thus far has been very rocky.”

He said there wasn’t a clear metric for success set by the government from the beginning.

A study released on Friday, shows that just two hours on social media increased the chance of depression and anxiety in children - with the strongest mental health impact seen in girls aged 12–13. The decade-long study led by Murdoch Children’s Research Institute found heavier social media use between the ages of 12-18 years was associated with small but noticeable increases in mental health problems one year later.