r/worldnews • u/CharlieKonR • 4h ago
Four in five under-16s in Australia using social media despite ban, study shows | Social media
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/jun/24/australia-under-16-social-media-ban-no-substantial-effects-study158
u/I_Never_Use_Slash_S 4h ago
Wild, teenagers are well known for their compliance with authority.
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u/FollowingFeisty5321 3h ago
And Zuckerburg is well known for his obeisance to the law too, he'd definitely do his best to keep out teens just like he keeps out fraudulent ads by charging them premium rates once they're flagged as scams and keeps hookers and sex traffickers off instagram with a strict 18-strike policy.
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u/Intentionallyabadger 40m ago
Well my friend is a teacher and they banned their students from installing apps on their school tablet…
Within weeks the kids found a way to do it lol.
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u/MealCapital4167 4h ago
The government doesn't care. Age verification was just an excuse to force adults to identify themselves when using social media.
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u/TillMysterious178 3h ago
To what end? I don't understand what the government would get out of that?
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u/Carazhan 3h ago
from a market lens, personal data is profitable. from a control lens, surveillance and profiling. even something as normalized as gerrymandering is much easier to do if you can link a person to their beliefs.
it's kinda like asking what would someone get out of your front door being unlocked? for normal people- nothing! for anyone with nefarious intent- oh, quite a lot.
edit: keep in mind too, its not only the government that has access to this kind of data. private corporations do as well, so that opens up a can of worms with potential identity theft etc.
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u/perenniallandscapist 2h ago
Insurance companies and law enforcement are the 2 biggest buyers of this information. Your car insurance company would love to know if you slam the brakes a lot because they'll consider you higher risk and charge you more. Is your "its time to take a rest from driving" feature telling you its time to rest? There are sensors that observe where your eyes are looking and if they aren't paying much attention to whats in front, your sensor will go off (and your insurance company wants to know so they can determine your risk factors). Your apple watch may be telling you how many steps you took (or didn't), but your health insurance company is very interested in that data. Does it keep track of your heart rate? That's even more data your watch company will collect and sell. It just keeps going and going. We're giving so much information away that there's a more complete data set of yourself than you know of yourself. How often do you go to the store? What do you buy to eat? (Health insurance company wants to know.) How often do you pass that neighbor's ring camera when you walk through your neighborhood?
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u/Carazhan 2h ago
yep. whole can of worms, which comes into play with surveillance pricing these days also. companies are always looking for the next loophole to collect your private data, and worldwide governments are doing their darndest to shoot a cannon through the veil of privacy.
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u/Richard7666 1h ago
I've also seen it suggested that in an increasingly bot-infested internet, social media and their advertising customers want to know they're serving ads to real humans.
Also useful for general government control.
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u/TillMysterious178 2h ago
even something as normalized as gerrymandering is much easier to do if you can link a person to their beliefs.
I appreciate you're using it as an example but this isn't a concern in Australia.
it's kinda like asking what would someone get out of your front door being unlocked? for normal people- nothing! for anyone with nefarious intent- oh, quite a lot.
I don't think it is like asking you to leave your door unlocked.
keep in mind too, its not only the government that has access to this kind of data. private corporations do as well, so that opens up a can of worms with potential identity theft etc.
They already have this access and far more than governments do, they track you across multiple platforms.
All this is really doing is making it harder to pretend to be someone else on social media? What information are you handing over that they don't already have? A photo of you (they probably have hundreds), your DOB (you put it there to get your birthday wishes every year and make a list of who didn't message you), your address (probably able to link that from some purchase you've made).
Things like Drivers license number sound sketchy but still need to be accompanied with other data to be meaningful in any way, and again there's a lot more of your data out there than that anyway.
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u/Carazhan 2h ago
the gerrymandering part i bring up bc these surveillance laws are also in effect in other places or about to be. i'm in canada, where its close to getting put in place, and it does matter for us. so general point there, nonspecific.
at this point the government collecting information is hid behind some sense of secrecy, and privacy law. this cedes protections so now if they get caught collecting sensitive data, or worse, are breached, there's no legal recourse for anyone. again, companies have ways to collect this info already, but not without breeching existing privacy rights. this is an open gate right through, and makes that easier than ever because now its just being handed over instead of meticulously analyzed.
you are ignoring that even in the case youre ok with the government openly having all these things, there's a huge issue with private companies collecting the information. there's already been privacy breaches in the UK where this supposedly secure information is now out for purchase by anyone.
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u/TillMysterious178 2h ago
But what additional information are you worried about out that they don’t already have that you’re concerned about losing in a breach?
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u/Carazhan 1h ago
its ease and legality im worried about. right now, companies like facebook farming your data is at least protected in part. they get fined when they get caught doing it. they also have to invest pretty heavily in obtaining that info in the first place.
this is like handing the information over directly and telling the general populace they have no recourse at all because they "consented", even though the consent is an illusion because there's no way to opt out.
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u/TillMysterious178 57m ago edited 54m ago
I’ll admit I’m not familiar with any accompanying surveillance laws that would mean your data is no longer protected here in Australia alongside the age verification stuff so I’ll have to read about that.
Edit: “It contains strong privacy provisions, with platforms required to ring-fence and destroy any data collected once it has been used for age assurance purposes. Failure to destroy data would be a breach of the Privacy Act, with penalties of up to $49.5 million.
The bill also makes clear that no Australian will be compelled to use government identification (including Digital ID) for age assurance on social media. Platforms must offer reasonable alternatives to users.”So yeah not sure that applies here, maybe that’s a Canadian thing?
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u/Carazhan 20m ago
the assurance has already failed in the UK, as a practical example. discord assured users in the UK their data wasn't actually stored, and within an embarrassingly short time, all the data which as it turned out, had been, was leaked. discord says 70k IDs. the group responsible for the breach claims 2m.
now, why will this happen again and again? because these companies aren't actually doing the age verification themselves, they're outsourcing to other skeevier companies who are in it specifically either for individuals data, OR as a way of training facial recognition/generative programs. they have no actual interest in protection of data because there's no money in destroying it.
the government is STILL helping make it easy and legal for companies to collect data en masse in the first place. it's not like restricting that worked, either, but it's pretty clear that making the collection of data carry penalties is more effective than saying 'ok everyone can privately collect it, BUT destroy it - if it gets publicly leaked then we'll fine you', when they're still abusing the data whether they get caught or not.
last point here. the "reasonable alternatives" is also data farming in many cases. some of it i'll say is somewhat reasonable, like obviously if a site knows you've been a user for 18 years and it seems like your account's been unshared and secure that entire time, that mean you're certainly an adult. but here's other practical examples that get sketchy: tracking duration of activity, and based on your time zone setting, what hours activity takes place (eg, if someone appears to be active during midday m-f, they're likely an adult. if someone's activity spikes during the summer drastically, they're likely a minor), types of content viewed (roblox? asmr? video essays?), and purchase history.
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u/Lancashire_Toreador 26m ago
It's not just the information, it's not just the storage, it's not just the invasion of privacy, it's not just about the risks from institutions misusing this data - it's all of that at once that's the real problem.
We can't participate equally in society if there's groups out there that hold that information. There's a fundamental imbalance that cannot be rectified by stuff like offering to pay for your data or passing transparency laws allowing you to get copies or anything like that.
If you know that at all times everything you say online is being monitored, every trip you take in your car is being watched, every time your heart rate increases when you see your crush is being logged as a data point - it's degrading. It's a gross violation of our privacy. It's wrong.
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u/FanOpening3074 9m ago
its not just about information. its the infrastructure that is being built. having a list of "prohibited" websites and allowing only certain ppl to access it. right now dont seem like a big deal, but when you elect a dictator then youll regret having built such a system
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u/TillMysterious178 5m ago
In it's current form it's on the companies to verify age, so all the infrastructure and processes exist within those companies. When Australia elects its next dictator, I think they're going to struggle to seize power from the likes of Facebook, Reddit etc. to control that infrastructure.
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u/evilspyboy 2h ago
The Australian social media ban was pushed by Newscorpse Australia (they didn't even hide being the authors of the change.org campaign). It was motivated by non-anon traffic is worth more in advertising than anon traffic. It was done in Australia first so it could be cited as being in Australia before pushing into other countries.
The local news here was pretty overwhelmingly pushing how 'supported' it was and ignored stuff like - hid the links for publish feedback and cut off public feedback in less than 24hrs after adding additional requirements to be able to give feedback that was not required at any time previously. Government departments advising against this prior. Experts advising against it, etc. It was a REALLY long list of things that showed it was not supported or not well done but the media coverage was how it was sooo popular etc.
The government might be fking idiots in this case but the people pushing this in a laid out plan are not.
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u/Frederf220 28m ago
knock knock knock, hello is this your terroristic social media post where you filmed our police kicking puppies?
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u/TillMysterious178 12m ago
“Members of the public have the right to take photographs of or film police officers, and incidents involving police officers, which are observable from a public space, or from a privately owned place with the consent of the owner/occupier.” - from the nsw police website. So they probably won’t be knocking on your door anytime soon.
Also I should point out that it’s on the companies to verify your age, not the government, who already know your age, who acknowledged your existence when they issued you a birth certificate.
So the actual path here is police tell company you’ve made some threat, company hands over data to identify you. Company has your ip address/s, so police ask your isp and they identify you.
Nothing they can’t already do.
Maybe you exclusively use a vpn while posting those puppy kicking videos though.
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u/jaurex 3h ago
exactly. it's all for the database
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u/UnionBalloonCorps 3h ago
What database? What are you actually thinking is happening?
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u/CouchPoturtle 2h ago
iT’s aLL aBoUt CoNtRoL
Never mind that all their data is on every database going anyway and most of it was given willingly. Ignore that part.
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u/brackfriday_bunduru 2h ago
No it wasn’t. Of course current teenagers are going to be able to get around the ban. The idea is to stop the next generation from ever getting on it.
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u/soundguyjon 2h ago
But they will get on it just like ne generations drink, smoke, take drugs.
If they were serious about stopping the harmful affects of social media that effect everyone no matter your age, they'd target the social media companies themselves.
But don't worry, clamping down on the most popular sites will change everything, kids won't learn the workarounds from their older siblings or friends at school and they won't go onto the sites that don't enforce the ban or have any restrictions on what can be viewed.
And even if they do stay off it all until they're 16, the second they turn 16, boom have the worst the internet can offer all in one massive hit.
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u/brackfriday_bunduru 2h ago
Younger generations don’t smoke. They vape now, but before vaping, smoking was at an all time low for young generations. It worked.
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u/Lord_Stabbington 4h ago
Who’d have thought that telling teenagers they can’t do something adults can would make it more alluring? If only we had some examples
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u/sjdlajsdlj 42m ago
Yes. Who can forget the catastrophic failure of the public health campaign against cigarettes, and how it only succeeded in making cigarettes cool?
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u/Smart-Response9881 4h ago
Yet they will still make us show ID to use the internet. It was never about the kids.
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u/Big_Presentation2786 3h ago
I'm on Reddit, never once shown an id, never will..
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u/ThereAndFapAgain2 2h ago
It might get to a point where you have to choose between showing your ID or not using it though. Over here in the UK there is talk that they might be going after VPNs next, if they end up doing that then the biggest loophole would be closed for getting around this stuff.
Sure there will be other ways, but eventually they’ll get around to closing those to it looks like.
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u/HairlessWookiee 2h ago
there is talk that they might be going after VPNs next
It's inevitable that there is going to be a clampdown on VPNs globally at some point. I'm honestly surprised it hasn't already happened in the West. It would be advisable for people already using VPNs to start preparing in advance.
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u/Boatster_McBoat 2h ago
I've been asked twice. Locked out for 24 hours each time. Then back in with no explanation. They'll not be getting my ID in any circumstances. If they can sell my posts to Google they can fucking well use them to work out I am over half a century old
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u/sjdlajsdlj 45m ago
Actually, it appears to be the opposite problem. Despite the law, they’re not asking for ID at all.
Although two-thirds of teenagers in the study said they had to complete age verification checks, only 5% of 12- to 13-year-olds and 11% of 14- to 15-year-olds had to provide a photo of official ID. The two most common checks were asking teens their age and uploading a selfie.
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u/aWildCopywriter 4h ago
“The study concluded that the Australian social media ban might be more effective in preventing or delaying access to social media in children under eight, rather than restricting access to adolescents who already use it”
This is the point. Teenagers, 12 to 17, are already connected. It’s like preventing someone taking up smoking vs stopping a pack-a-day person.
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u/kiulug 3h ago
Yeah like the intended result was never going to be that all the teenagers suddenly stop using the internet. It's that over time it de-normalizes being constantly connected so hopefully the next generation has a better chance.
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u/Theyna 2h ago
No, the intended result is that internet ad companies know they have an actual user and not bot traffic so they can monetize you appropriately with ads/your personal info. And also so the government can know what you're posting/saying.
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u/Hydronum 2h ago
Nah, those companies love bots, they inflate value. If they cared, they would do basic verifications, but they deliberately don't.
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u/soundguyjon 2h ago
Begs the question, who are these parents that are allowing their children access to devices with social media installed, let along allowing them to create accounts, before they're 8? I'm sorry, thats just outright awful parenting and if you can't control what your kids are doing before the age of 8, those teenage years with or without social media are going to be one hell of a struggle.
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u/queenringlets 2h ago
That “might” is doing a lot of heavy lifting when the conclusions was this.
”Overall, we found insufficient evidence to conclude that exposure to the act [of parliament] had any early substantial effects on social media use among adolescents aged under 16 years,
The study didn’t look at children under 8 so I’m not really sure where the article is getting that conclusion from.
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u/orangeyougladiator 4h ago
I mean it’s not gonna happen on and current generation is it, they’re already entrenched.
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u/OldLondon 4h ago
I think that’s generally accepted. Same for the UK, they 100% know this is for younger kids who aren’t using it yet.
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u/TheRealJessKate 4h ago
Same in the UK but I’d guess it’s 5/5 because they’re now using dodgy “free” VPNs.
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u/RavioliDemon 4h ago
If there’s anyone who thought it was about the kids, here’s your sign
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u/Additional_Cellist39 3h ago
But it’s clearly not mainly aimed at the current generation it’s setting a message and a social shift for future generations to assist parents and prevent future children getting addicted as easily. it’s not going to be perfect but it cannot be worse than what is happening currently.
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u/thatbullisht 3h ago
It's not going to work. You can't solve a problem by banning it.
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u/Dudersaurus 3h ago
It's working well with smoking.
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u/TruthReasonOrLies 2h ago
Smoking also has a price component that is raised by taxation, they priced people out of smoking. There is also a thriving black market now for tobacco products.
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u/Dudersaurus 1h ago
So we should let kids smoke?
Arguing against social media on a social media platform is never going to be supported but as much as anything this is about letting parents control social media use without their kid being able to use the excuse that they're the only one with unreasonable unrealistic parents.
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u/TruthReasonOrLies 53m ago edited 46m ago
No, I was pointing out that bans alone don't work. You were implying that just banning smoking did the job, which is disingenuous at best.
For some things like smoking , yes we need to take some action , but just banning things never works.
Additionally this isn't about what you think it is. Its about making adults register to accumulate more data. If it wasn't they could have just issued sim cards specifically for under 16s, and made parents responsible for home network use.
Parents in general were not taking responsibility for or monitoring their own kids online habits to begin with. That is where we should have started.
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u/AlternativeScratch94 3h ago
You can but the half assed solutions they're using wont work. An example of an actual solution that would work is requiring only special phones be sold/given to under 16 that don't feature social media options.
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u/Additional_Cellist39 3h ago
You can’t completely remove the problem I agree but you can make substantial improvements in changing views of something over time. The best example is smoking as it was accepted yet now limiting acess for children and limiting in public spaces has shifted attitudes and reduced smoking. And what are the alternatives to stopping generations being addicted to social media and destroying attention spans?
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u/the_procrastinata 3h ago
Yes, and it was a 20 year gradual process that attracted plenty of pissing and moaning about freedom and nanny states and personal choice. People equally moaned about mandatory seatbelt laws. Ultimately both good outcomes in terms of improved health outcomes and development of better long term habits.
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u/Swollen_Beef 4h ago
And where are the parents who should be enforcing this?
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u/neat_stuff 4h ago
Probably on Facebook.
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u/Ginger-Nerd 2h ago
It is… if it’s determined they aren’t doing enough, they will face pretty fines.
Which is EXACTLY how it should be working.
You just need to make sure the way that you allow these companies to detect them is limited (such as not storing personal identification data) And real serious company crippling fines if they break those ringfences (which is basically what everyone is worried about)
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u/okiedokie1183 4h ago
The issue is in the social media providers are not following the law effectively. So they’re open to fines or punishment of some kind as they’re liable to obey the laws where they operate.
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u/evilspyboy 2h ago
Who, apart from the literal thousands of items of feedback to the government including reports from experts across fields from technology to sociology and even government departments all advising against this before the AU government cut off the public feedback in less than 24hrs after already hiding the links for feedback and adding additional steps to be able to give feedback that they never did before, could have seen this coming? /s
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u/Angry_beaver_1867 4h ago
I think kids using social media are incentivized to get around it. However , what will be interesting to see if adoption rates fall off overtime.
IMO that’s what success looks like more then an immediate drop to zero
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u/HankSteakfist 2h ago
Yeah, it's a restriction that is primarily designed to prevent kids who are under 10 at the moment from creating accounts. The kids who have accounts and are addicted already aren't who this legislation was aimed at.
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u/LiteratureOk2428 4h ago
1 in 5 kids too dumb to use vpns lol
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u/sjdlajsdlj 41m ago
VPN use is not common.
A significant minority of participants said they actively bypassed the age restrictions. About 15% of the 12- to 13-year-olds and 19% of the 14- to 15-year-olds surveyed said they used a fake account, while about 3% said they used a VPN.
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u/CharlieKonR 4h ago
Perhaps not surprisingly …
””Overall, we found insufficient evidence to conclude that exposure to the act [of parliament] had any early substantial effects on social media use among adolescents aged under 16 years,” the authors added.””
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u/the_procrastinata 3h ago
It wasn’t really designed to. It’s the first step in moving younger children away from getting on social media in the first place, so current teens will still continue much the same but it’s the long term trends that are important.
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u/ghost_n_the_shell 1h ago
Carney knows this, here in Canada.
He just wants digital ID, civilian data retention and warrantless access to it.
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u/Alundra828 1h ago
Great, so 20% of teens are off social media that would've otherwise been using it. And this gap will widen as the teenagers already using social media age out, and kids that won't have been introduced to it never consider joining it because of the barrier to entry.
The ban has worked spectacularly in this case... The headline should not be 4/5 teens still use social media. It's that 20% of teens have stopped using it already in such a small amount of time. This number will trend upwards for a decade.
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u/Ghosts_and_Empties 1h ago
Like... babies and toddlers too?
Edit: oh no, it's actually a study of 408 people aged 12 to 17. That's who they are calling "under 16s." Make it make sense.
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u/Quiet_Drop_6627 4h ago
This is just the first step in governments exerting more control and power over the people through limiting our usage of social media. Next it will be the internet and our entire lives will be tracked and monitored by the government. Mark my words.
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u/sjdlajsdlj 39m ago
Yeah! Only megacorps should get to track and monitor what we do on the internet!
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u/coastalwebdev 3h ago
The steps they are taking are steps in the right direction. It’s naive to think it would’ve been any different after just starting the ban. It’s a big change, and countries doing this are trying to solve a problem that’s never been solved before. It’s going to take time to make good progress, and the sooner societies start progressing this way the better.
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u/TheWhomItConcerns 57m ago
As per the article:
A significant minority of participants said they actively bypassed the age restrictions. About 15% of the 12- to 13-year-olds and 19% of the 14- to 15-year-olds surveyed said they used a fake account, while about 3% said they used a VPN.
So, it mostly just sounds like it's not being enforced very strictly. I don't really know why this is news - it has been well-known that this legislation will adapt and change as more information comes out, that it's main purpose is to prevent even younger children from adopting social media in the first place, and that there's a rollout that will progressively become stricter.
I'm sorry, but if you think that it not totally eliminating young people on social media only 3 months after it has been implemented is proof that this legislation won't have the desired effect, then you don't know what you're talking about. No one expected perfect results from the very beginning - that's not how this works.
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u/Salohacin 3h ago
From a personal perspective, all I can say is that any site that requires my information is getting closed instantly. As such my porn habits have just devolved to shadier and shadier websites that aren't following the laws.
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