Australia’s Under-16 Social Media Ban: A Nanny State Distraction from the Crises That Actually Matter

From 10 December 2025, Australia will enforce a world-first ban preventing anyone under the age of 16 from having a social media account. Meta, ever punctual, has announced it will begin deleting teen accounts even earlier, as though hoping for a gold star from Canberra. Officially, the government claims this sweeping move is about reducing “pressures and risks” for children online. In practice, it looks suspiciously like another example of Australia’s favourite political manoeuvre: impose a dramatic, headline-friendly restriction while sidestepping the serious social issues that would require actual investment, nuance, and political courage.

The idea of keeping children safe is compelling and admirable, of course it is. No one disputes that the digital world can expose kids to misogyny, bullying, harmful content, and predatory behaviour. But banning social media accounts for an entire generation is less a solution and more a performance. It’s an act of national theatre that assumes complexity can be solved with prohibition and that parental judgement is an optional extra in family life. It’s also deeply ironic considering the government’s own research admits that age-verification tools are least reliable for the age group they’re meant to detect. Still, why let technical impossibility get in the way of a good press conference?

Under the ban, platforms must take “reasonable steps” to ensure under-16s cannot sign up, and they face multimillion-dollar fines for getting it wrong. But “reasonable steps” remain conveniently undefined. The options floated include government ID checks, facial recognition, voice analysis, and behavioural inference, all methods that raise more privacy concerns than they resolve. Given Australia’s long and colourful history of catastrophic data breaches, it’s baffling that anyone considers it wise to store biometric information tied to children. Yet here we are, poised to do exactly that, because the appearance of safety seems to outweigh the actual practice of it.

And let’s be honest: teenagers will bypass this ban within 24 hours. They will use VPNs, shared devices, fake birthdates, messaging apps, gaming servers, group chats, and whatever new platform emerges in response to the legislation. They will out-smart, out-tech, and out-manoeuvre the system because that is what young people can do, especially when the system treats them like liabilities instead of participants in the world they already inhabit.

The bigger concern here is not the ban’s impracticality, it’s the way it misdirects our national focus. While Australia boldly declares war on TikTok, we remain a country where domestic violence is so endemic that one woman is killed every four days, https://www.aihw.gov.au/A; country where child poverty rates continue to rise https://valuingchildreninitiative.com.au/. A country where homelessness affects families, young people, and women at unprecedented levels. A country where youth mental health services are overstretched, underfunded, and struggling to keep up with the growing demand. These are not abstract social risks; they are daily realities. And yet they receive nothing like the legislative ferocity being unleashed on Instagram.

Australia is often described as a nanny state, but it increasingly behaves like a nanny preoccupied with the wrong children. We regulate adult life with the precision of a helicopter parent: mandatory bicycle helmets for everyone, smoking bans on beaches and balconies, ID scanning for alcohol purchases, and repeated attempts to filter or censor the internet. Meanwhile, the crises tearing families apart violence, addiction, poverty, inadequate housing receive only incremental funding and occasional political woeful handwringing. The contrast is impossible to ignore.

Other countries, those with higher happiness rankings, lower violence rates, and healthier children, have taken a different approach. Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, and Switzerland all consistently outperform Australia on safety, wellbeing, and trust. They have not banned teenagers from social media. They have invested in digital education, mental health support, strong welfare systems, and community trust. They recognise that wellbeing comes from stable foundations, not reactive restrictions.

The danger of Australia’s approach is that it treats children as problems to be controlled rather than individuals to be guided. It reinforces a culture of paternalism rather than empowerment. And worst of all, it gives the impression that something substantial has been done to protect children when, in reality, nothing structural has changed. The risks that truly endanger young people, family violence, neglect, instability, poverty, homelessness are not digital. They are material.

So yes, it is absurd. And yes, it is a distraction. But more importantly, it is a reminder of how often Australia reaches for the simplest solution rather than the most effective one. Banning social media for under-16s may make politicians look momentarily decisive, it does little to build a healthier, more equitable society.