{"id":185350,"date":"2025-12-10T19:33:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T19:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/185350\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T19:33:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T19:33:09","slug":"australian-teenagers-say-theyre-finding-a-way-around-social-media-ban-world-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/185350\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian teenagers say they’re finding a way around social media ban | World News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some Australian kids are already outsmarting the government and the tech companies.<\/p>\n

At a harbourside park in Sydney, teenagers told Sky News they’ve found a way around the ban<\/a> by using VPNs or their parents’ social media accounts.<\/p>\n

I met a dozen teenagers in the suburb of Balmain, and almost all of them were still accessing social media.<\/p>\n

Felix Webster is 14 and is still using his social media accounts despite the ban: “I think it’s just being slow and it’s going to block everyone within the next week.”<\/p>\n

However, Felix says “everyone’s going to find a way around it easily”.<\/p>\n

Read more: Australian PM issues warning over social media ban<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Felix<\/p>\n

Image:
\n Felix Webster said he is still using his accounts<\/p>\n

Kira Solanki, 14, wants to “wind down” after school and says social media is a way to “take a break, but now [I] can’t do that any more”.<\/p>\n

Australia’s law to restrict 10 social media apps (so far) to kids aged under 16 is an extraordinary move by a government determined to try to stamp out cyberbullying and online addiction.<\/p>\n

Read more: How Australia’s social media ban works<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Kira<\/p>\n

Image:
\n Kira Solanki uses social media as a way to take a break<\/p>\n

Raphael Williams Veazey argues kids can still be bullied in real life.<\/p>\n

“I think it’s a bit stupid,” Raphael says. “They could have used different measures, instead of an outright ban for everyone.”<\/p>\n

He also explains that he tricked his social media platform into thinking he was older.<\/p>\n

\"Raphael<\/p>\n

Image:
\n Raphael Williams Veazey said he disagrees with the outright ban<\/p>\n

Australia’s restrictions still allow children to use messaging services like WhatsApp, but TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat are all banned.<\/p>\n

With summer school holidays barely a week away, 14-year-old Kobe Staunton expects it could be a quiet one.<\/p>\n

“It’ll be pretty like lonely and boring, because I can’t speak to my friends on most of the apps.”<\/p>\n

Read more from Sky News:
US plans to start checking all tourists’ social media<\/a>
GCHQ releases annual Christmas puzzle – can you solve it?<\/a> <\/p>\n

Some parents are also concerned about whether the ban will really work. Children can still look at social media apps, like YouTube, even if they don’t have an account.<\/p>\n

Ryan Alridge says, “There’s a lot of good stuff [in the law] but it’s not necessarily going to suddenly save all the kids from harm.”<\/p>\n

Australians are dealing with a brave new world of social media rules, but it’s still unknown whether this nationwide social experiment will be enough to get children off their devices and outdoors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some Australian kids are already outsmarting the government and the tech companies. At a harbourside park in Sydney,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185351,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[93,61,60,282],"class_list":{"0":"post-185350","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}