Australia Imposes World's First Under-16 Social Media Ban
Australia will soon bar anyone aged 15 and under from using major social media platforms — an unprecedented national ban set to take effect Wednesday — leaving many young users bracing for sudden offline life, according to Nikkei.
Fourteen-year-old TikTok creator Zoey, whose account will be frozen despite more than 50,000 followers, told Nikkei Asia she expects to feel “much less connected” and “very isolated.” She called the ban “very much digital exclusion, because you’re excluding us from a huge part of the world, not just Australia, it’s the world.”
Under the new rules, companies like TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and X must keep under-16s off their platforms or face fines up to A$49.5 million. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has defended the law as a safety measure, saying, “Social media is doing social harm to our kids. We’ve called time on it… We want our kids to have a childhood.”
Tech giants including Meta, TikTok, Snap and YouTube say they will comply, though Google called the policy “disappointing” and argued it “will, in fact, make Australian kids less safe on YouTube,” according to Nikkei ...
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