In the eight months since the teen social media ban law passed, the federal government has seemed unchanged in its commitment to the policy. But during that time, there’s been a subtle shift in its argument for restricting children under 16 from having social media accounts. And this change — largely unnoticed — is crucial to understanding whether the ban will be a success or a failure on the government’s own terms.
When Prime Minister Anthony Albanese spoke about the law in late 2024, he repeated the line “social media is doing social harm to our young Australians”.
The way in which social media was doing harm was addressed in the documents accompanying the federal government’s bill.
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“The proposal to introduce a minimum age for social media will reduce harms (such as cyberbullying, body image issues, eating disorders and addiction to scrolling) that arise from young people having negative experiences online,” read the government analysis of the bill’s impact.
In this, there are two kinds of harms: firstly, the harms from the type of content that’s found on social media platforms. These manifest as “cyberbullying, body image issues, [and] eating disorders”. Then there’s the implicit harm from the design of the platforms themselves, which can lead to “addiction to scrolling”.
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The government made the case that both are present risks, but emphasised the former. Social media is a murky world of unacceptably risky content that children between the ages of 13-16 shouldn’t be exposed to, it argued.
But when the government registered the rules for the teen social media ban late last month, its emphasis had changed.
New Communications Minister Anika Wells said the point of the rules was to target social media platforms with “persuasive and predatory algorithms targeting our kids”.
The rules were designed to address “addictive behaviours caused by persuasive or manipulative design features, social isolation, sleep interference, poor mental and physical health (including unhealthy social comparisons and negative body image), low life satisfaction and exposure to inappropriate and harmful content”, according to its explanatory statement.
Nearly a year after the teen social media ban law was drafted — during a short and unusual policy development process — the government changed tack on its flagship tech policy. Apparently, the main problem with social media platforms isn’t the content they host, but the technology itself.
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This shift has significant implications for understanding the teen social media ban. If the major concern is the technology itself, then it’s less about Meta, TikTok or YouTube doing a better job at moderating their platforms, and more about the fundamental design of their services. The focus instead lands on design elements embedded with addictive features, such as push notifications and endless algorithmic recommendations. It’s a more coherent policy, especially when considered alongside the rest of Australia’s internet regulations.
It’s also more consistent with the law’s exemptions, which are set up to exclude platforms based on their major uses (like for education or professional services) and not necessarily about how good a job they do making sure kids aren’t seeing explicit content.
But it also exposes one of the major flaws of policy: there’s no incentive for the social media companies to make a better platform for kids. Without the vetoed exemption framework, TikTok and Meta have no reason to make versions of their products without the “persuasive or manipulative design features”. If we are to accept the government’s own admission that kids will circumvent its policy, we are accepting that this policy will force teens to go to more harmful places on the internet rather than giving these platforms reasons to make better options.
It bears mentioning that many of the youth safety features (such as nude image blurring and quiet mode) that companies like Meta implement for teens are also available for adults. A less harmful internet for children can also mean a less harmful internet for the rest of us.
Australia’s shifting rationale for its teen social media ban has landed on a more compelling case for government intervention. But this clarity of purpose makes it even more obvious that the ban in its current form, without exemptions that compel the tech companies to change the design of their products, is still just a punitive policy punishing these companies for their past sins with no chance for redemption. It misses an opportunity to reform in favour of revenge.
Is the teen social media ban in its current form a missed opportunity?
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