<
https://www.techdirt.com/2026/03/20/australias-teen-social-media-ban-is-just-training-a-generation-in-the-art-of-the-workaround/>
"We’ve been covering Australia’s under-16 social media ban since before it went
into effect, first noting the confusion and obvious implementation problems as
pretty much everyone realized it was a total mess, and then documenting how the
ban was actively harming kids with disabilities by cutting them off from
critical support communities.
None of this was even remotely surprising. Critics around the world warned
about all of it. The government went ahead anyway because doing
something
tends to poll better than
doing something that actually works, especially
when the thing that works is harder to explain. And government officials
insisted (incorrectly) that the only ones who were complaining were the big
tech companies or their proxies.
Now, three months in, the data is starting to arrive, and it confirms what
should have been obvious from the start. New data from parental monitoring
company Qustodio, provided to
Crikey, shows that the ban has barely moved the
needle:
While TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat all saw a decrease in use by Australians
aged 10-15, the majority of teens who had been using the social media
platforms pre-ban remained on the services afterwards.
That’s according to a new snapshot of data provided to Crikey by parental
monitoring company Qustodio, adding to early evidence that there’s
widespread circumvention of the government’s flagship tech policy.
The usage drop was only marginally larger than the normal seasonal dip that
happens every year. In other words, the “world-first” ban achieved roughly the
same effect as summer ending."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
