Australia leader defends social media ban as teens brag about staying online

SYDNEY - Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese acknowledged some young people were still on

social media a day after a world-first ban on under-16s went live

, saying the roll-out was always going to be bumpy but would ultimately save lives.

A day after the law took effect, Australian social media feeds were flooded with comments from people claiming to be under 16, including one on the Prime Minister’s TikTok account saying, “I’m still here, wait until I can vote”.

Under the law, 10 of the biggest platforms including TikTok, Meta’s Instagram and Alphabet’s YouTube must bar underage users or face a fine of up to A$49.5 million (S$42 million). The government has said previously that it would take some time for the platforms to set up processes to do this.

“This is the law, this isn’t something that can be flouted,” Mr Albanese said on News Corp’s Sky News.

“Some young people who haven’t yet been pulled off social media are sending out notices bragging about it. That just tells the platforms who they are, and so it will be taken down.”

Governments around the world have said they would monitor the Australian rollout as they weigh whether to do something similar. US Republican senator Josh Hawley endorsed the ban as it took effect, Nine newspapers reported, while France, Denmark, Malaysia and others have already said they plan to emulate the Australian model.

The Australian internet regulator, the eSafety Commissioner, would ask all affected platforms to report numbers of under-16 accounts on the days before and after the ban went live on Dec 10, Communications Minister Anika Wells said.

Meta repeated its opposition to the law, saying some experts, advocates and parent groups were concerned it was driving teenagers to less regulated parts of the internet and that there was “little interest in compliance”.

“This will result in inconsistent application of the law and ultimately does not make young people safer,” a spokesperson said.

TikTok and Snap, owner of Snapchat, declined to comment on the implementation, while YouTube, X, Amazon’s Twitch, Reddit and Australian-owned Kick - all of which are covered by the ban - were not immediately available for comment.

The ban generated impassioned reactions across the spectrum of global commentators - including from US psychologist Jonathan Haidt, whose book “The Anxious Generation” featured prominently in the Australian debate.

“Bravo Australia,” he wrote on X.

The United Nations children’s agency UNICEF warned in a statement the ban might encourage children to visit less regulated parts of the internet and could not work alone.

“Laws introducing age restrictions are not an alternative to companies improving platform design and content moderation,” the statement said.

Mr Albanese, visiting a school in Canberra, said the ban would lead to better educational outcomes and behaviour” since “you get better social interaction when students aren’t subject to looking at their devices constantly”.

Australian searches for virtual private networks (VPNs), which can mask an internet user’s location, surged to the highest in about 10 years in the week before the ban took effect, according to publicly available Google data.

Free VPN provider Windscribe told Reuters it experienced a 400 per cent increase in installations in Australia in the 24 hours after the ban went live.

Another free VPN provider, hide.me, said it had a 65 per cent spike in visits from Australia in the days before the ban kicked in, although that had not translated to a rising number of downloads.

All 10 platforms named by the ban opposed it before saying they would comply. As the ban took effect, some platforms not covered by the ban rose to the top of app download charts, prompting the Australian government to say the platform list was “dynamic”.

One app, Lemon8, which is owned by TikTok parent Bytedance, introduced an age minimum of 16. Photo-sharing app Yope told Reuters it had experienced “very fast growth” to about 100,000 Australian users. About half its users were over 16.

The company told Reuters it had told the Australian internet regulator overseeing the roll-out that it considered itself a private messaging service, not social media. REUTERS