{"id":570609,"date":"2026-08-16T09:22:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T09:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/570609\/"},"modified":"2026-08-16T09:22:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T09:22:11","slug":"under-16-social-media-ban-teenagers-say-vpns-and-fake-ages-could-bypass-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/570609\/","title":{"rendered":"Under-16 social media ban: Teenagers say VPNs and fake ages could bypass rules"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Government has been developing its own approach, with National aiming to introduce legislation and secure its passage before the 2026 election<\/a>, although exactly how age verification and enforcement would work remains under development.<\/p>\n

Boys fear a ban will do more harm than good<\/p>\n

For five Tauranga Boys\u2019 College students, social media is not simply somewhere to waste an afternoon scrolling.<\/p>\n

It is where friendships are maintained, plans are made, problems are shared and, for some, where they find the space to say things they struggle to voice elsewhere.<\/p>\n

The boys estimate they spend between two and six hours a day on social media, using everything from Instagram and Snapchat to Discord, YouTube and Facebook.<\/p>\n

Boy 1, who spends five to six hours a day online, said Instagram allowed him to meet people with similar interests and experiences.<\/p>\n

He believed restrictions would represent a \u201creally big shift\u201d in his life.<\/p>\n

\u201cSocial media has been like a really good thing for me because I can tell other people about my problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t really talk to other people about like same interests, like relatable problems that we have.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TeenagersTeenagers spoken to by the Herald reported spending several hours each day on social media. Photo \/ 123rf<\/p>\n

Boy 2, who estimated he spent four to five hours a day online, said Snapchat was a way of talking to friends and questioned how teenagers would organise their lives without it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are you going to do to connect, make plans with other people and organise things if you can\u2019t communicate without meeting someone in person?\u201d<\/p>\n

For Boy 3, the issue went deeper than boredom or convenience.<\/p>\n

He said social media provided a \u201csafe space\u201d to discuss his emotions with friends when he did not always feel able to have those conversations at home.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf social media was banned, I would probably start deteriorating in that sense because I\u2019d only have the time I spend in life with friends, like at school, to actually be able to vent and explain my problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

The boys believed adults could overlook the meaningful conversations occurring behind the hours of scrolling and messaging.<\/p>\n

Boy 1 said social media had helped him through \u201ca lot of hard times\u201d, while Boy 3 worried restrictions could cut teenagers off from friends they trusted.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf that gets taken away from them, I feel like it\u2019ll cause a lot more harm than good.\u201d<\/p>\n

But none of the boys pretended social media was harmless.<\/p>\n

They had encountered scams, misinformation, bullying, nudity, racism and homophobic abuse.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Government is considering how restrictions on social media use for under-16s could work in New Zealand. Photo \/ 123rf<\/p>\n

Boy 4 said he had been added to Snapchat group chats where people shared nudity, bullied and harassed others, and had seen students use TikTok to mock teachers and classmates.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s very bad because it\u2019s just basically bullying people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boy 3 said he had become \u201cdesensitised\u201d after years of encountering inappropriate material and misinformation.<\/p>\n

Boy 5 acknowledged harmful aspects, but said banning social media could create new problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing\u2019s ever perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n

And if restrictions arrived, the boys were sceptical they would keep teenagers offline for long.<\/p>\n

They rattled off workarounds: VPNs (virtual private networks), alternative accounts and false birthdays.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could probably use a search engine and search how to get past it,\u201d Boy 2 said. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou can basically ask AI, and it would tell you how.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even if there was no way around the restrictions, Boy 2 doubted he would suddenly abandon his phone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d still be on my phone. It wouldn\u2019t make me want to go outside more.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Social media\u2019s literally our lives\u2019<\/p>\n

For a group of St Hilda\u2019s Collegiate School students, the prospect of life without social media prompted everything from practical objections to something approaching horror.<\/p>\n

\u201cHell no,\u201d Girl 2 said. \u201cThe day social media dies is the day I die.\u201d<\/p>\n

All eight girls said they spent at least three hours a day on various social media platforms, while some admitted weekend \u201cdoomscrolling\u201d could stretch towards 10 hours.<\/p>\n

Girl 1 said she was essentially online all day during the weekends, from waking around 8am until going to sleep around midnight.<\/p>\n

But despite that heavy use, the girls were largely unconvinced that proposed restrictions for under-16s would keep teenagers off social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people already fake their age on social media,\u201d Girl 1 said. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf social media gets banned for under-16s, they\u2019re still going to do it anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

VPNs were repeatedly suggested as an obvious workaround.<\/p>\n

Girl 2 said students already used them to bypass restrictions blocking Snapchat, TikTok and other sites at school and during prep time at the hostel.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just put a VPN on, and then it works, and we sit there and scroll on TikTok.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the girls, social media was deeply embedded in how teenagers communicated.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one texts on messages unless you\u2019re texting, like, old people,\u201d Girl 2 said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI even text my mum on Snapchat. We have a streak.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"SomeSome students said they primarily comminicated with their parents over Snapchat. Photo \/ 123rf<\/p>\n

Girl 3 said adults underestimated how central social media had become to young people\u2019s friendships.<\/p>\n

\u201cAdults don\u2019t know how hard it is and how social media\u2019s literally our lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe get to keep up with all our friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

Girl 4 said platforms such as Snapchat also made it easier to stay connected with people met through sports and other activities, where swapping a Snapchat username felt more natural than exchanging phone numbers.<\/p>\n

But the girls acknowledged their relationship with social media was complicated.<\/p>\n

Girl 8 said it could encourage creativity through cooking, baking and fashion content, while also meaning teenagers spent less time physically with friends.<\/p>\n

Girl 7 believed removing social media could push her towards more hobbies and sport \u2013 but noted that she also used TikTok to learn guitar.<\/p>\n

She questioned whether banning social media would eliminate bullying.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there wasn\u2019t social media, people wouldn\u2019t bully online; they\u2019d bully in person, which would be worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several had been on social media since primary school, with some joining during the Covid-19 pandemic and one recalling getting Snapchat in 2018. <\/p>\n

Asked what might fill the hours if the platforms suddenly disappeared, Girl 5 said she would \u201cstare at the wall\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cI would pick up some other unhealthy habit. Maybe I would pick up vaping, I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rachel Maher is the education correspondent for the New Zealand Herald. She also covers other topics such as Auckland issues, crime and local government. She started at the Herald as a breaking news journalist in 2022, before joining the Auckland team this year. <\/p>\n

Sign up to The Daily H<\/a>, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Government has been developing its own approach, with National aiming to introduce legislation and secure its passage…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":570610,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[14723,1443,37879,74187,6127,95,1060,26977,76546,124,37483,25905,305,11551,48053,100327,29391,1073,6096,111,43,139,69,1642,3766,18481,15400,23277,281316,6122,5659,56442,7812,5317,1072,17213,14040,47066,165,2846,8229,6035,281315,109398,70215,6923,49493,6730],"class_list":["post-570609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-15yearolds","tag-about","tag-admit","tag-ages","tag-already","tag-and","tag-ban","tag-banned","tag-bypass","tag-could","tag-fake","tag-hadnt","tag-have","tag-hours","tag-lock","tag-maher","tag-mean","tag-media","tag-message","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-online","tag-parents","tag-politicians","tag-push","tag-rachel","tag-rulemakers","tag-rules","tag-say","tag-scrolling","tag-seen","tag-snapchat","tag-social","tag-speaks","tag-spend","tag-teenagers","tag-their","tag-them","tag-they","tag-things","tag-under16","tag-under16s","tag-vpns","tag-what","tag-wish","tag-would"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}