{"id":339480,"date":"2025-12-09T18:45:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T18:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/339480\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T18:45:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T18:45:09","slug":"millions-of-australian-teens-lose-access-to-social-media-accounts-as-ban-takes-effect-live-updates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/339480\/","title":{"rendered":"Millions of Australian teens lose access to social media accounts as ban takes effect &#8211; live updates"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last September Australia&#8217;s PM announced plans for a world-first&#8230; now it&#8217;s realitypublished at 18:16 GMT<\/p>\n<p>18:16 GMT<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-8kvzjk-Contributor etflsgg2\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/5b5bf601-5f29-4297-9868-719440555093.jpg.webp.webp\" width=\"64\" height=\"64\" class=\"ssrcss-11yxrdo-Image edrdn950\"\/>Angus Thompson<br \/>Live reporter<\/p>\n<p>      <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese sat next to an Australian flag\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/848f041b-b9fa-4ef6-b323-c5eca4e2eeec.jpg.webp.webp\"  width=\"2544\" height=\"1431\" class=\"ssrcss-11yxrdo-Image edrdn950\"\/>Image source, EPA<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">You&#8217;ve joined our live coverage at the start of a new era for Australian teenagers under 16, who will wake in a few hours&#8217; time without access to their social media accounts. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Last September Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced plans to apply an age limit to social media use after South Australia Premier Peter Malinauskas had raised the idea of a ban.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The idea had bipartisan support, with then-opposition leader Peter Dutton airing similar plans in the months before. By late 28 November, both houses of parliament passed legislation to ban children under-16 from social media under the world&#8217;s strictest laws.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">\u201cWe want our kids to have a childhood and parents to know we have their backs,&#8221; Albanese told reporters at the time.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"A circle of young people from the shoulders down holding a smartphones in multicoloured cases\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/f0fcbc64-472f-401b-a578-7d1a665b1d84.jpg.webp.webp\"  width=\"2121\" height=\"1193\" class=\"ssrcss-11yxrdo-Image edrdn950\"\/>Image source, Getty ImagesImage caption, <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Countries around the world are debating the best way to protect young people from online harm<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In the lead-up to it passing, social media companies were already railing against the ban, with Meta arguing the bill would be &#8220;ineffective&#8221; in meeting its aim of making kids safer, and X questioning the &#8220;lawfulness&#8221; of the bill.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In the following months, the government faced questions over whether it could effectively keep children off the platforms, with a commissioned trial eventually finding age-checking tech could effectively enforce it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Debate also stirred over whether a ban would keep children from harm or push them into other, unregulated corners of the internet, while others argued tech firms should instead be made to remove harmful content from their platforms.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">While some teenagers have accepted the ban, others believe it infringes on their rights, with a High Court challenge to the world-first already afoot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last September Australia&#8217;s PM announced plans for a world-first&#8230; now it&#8217;s realitypublished at 18:16 GMT 18:16 GMT Angus&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339481,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[97,259,260],"class_list":{"0":"post-339480","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}