Australia’s teen social media ban is a flop. But there’s no joy in ‘I told you so’
2026-04-03 10:20 UTC
Replies (33)
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@arcine@jlai.lu 2026-04-04 10:38
Support public education about the risks of social media, and better parental control software ! That is the only way to actually fix this mess.
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@fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 2026-04-03 10:56
It was never designed to protect children Glad to see it’s not even working. Let’s keep fighting aginst these evil laws
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@Jimbel@lemmy.world 2026-04-04 10:53
The addictive design of platforms, software and algorithms should be adressed, not the users age. And the tech companies should be made responsible to design more healthy platforms, etc. The problem is the design of tech, not the people using it.
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@GreenBeanMachine@lemmy.world 2026-04-04 10:59
Get ready for even more surveillance and censorship. That’s all they know about how to fix problems - bandaids to hide symptoms instead of addressing the root cause of issues. Perhaps this was always the plan. Introduce a law for “protecting children” knowing it won’t work as it stands, so then it will be easier to introduce even more surveillance and restrictions to fix the current law, All in the name of protecting children. How can you be against it? /s
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@melsaskca@lemmy.ca 2026-04-04 11:43
Censorship is never the answer. Teaching values and the corresponding ethics and morals that come with it is closer to the answer. A world where you burn down shit just to get a job as a firefighter makes this path a bit more difficult and harder to follow.
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@FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 2026-04-04 23:49
A 30% reduction of kids being exposed to these harmful platforms is a good thing and I’m glad to see it. Also, all laws are imperfect, and expecting 100% efficacy is moronic.
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@sunbeam60@feddit.uk 2026-04-05 11:30
Just because we agree with the news doesn’t make it correct. The ban was brought about in December 2025. It’s clearly far too early to draw any conclusions about the impact. If we are going to cherry pick data let’s make sure to cherry-pick data from both sides: theconversation.com/early-wins-for-the-social-med…
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@Lexam@lemmy.world 2026-04-03 11:30
I don’t know. There’s some joy in saying I told you so, to people who had the hubris to try and stop teenagers from being teenagers.
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@gurty@lemmy.world 2026-04-03 10:39
‘…internally the government was aware of a lack of evidence to support the ban before they passed the legislation anyway’ Terrific job, gov.
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@sbv@sh.itjust.works 2026-04-03 17:36
With a [70% non-compliance rate](https://www.esafety.gov.au/sites/default/files/2026-03/SocialMediaMinimumAgeComplianceUpdateMarch2026.pdf), that isn't entirely surprising. Platforms are even *less likely* to implement real reforms that the author alludes to.
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@shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 2026-04-03 15:27
Speak for yourself. I find quite a bit of joy in "I told you so".
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@BranBucket@lemmy.world 2026-04-04 21:03
>What if, instead of trying and failing to kick kids off social media, we focused our attention on the reasons why being online is so often detrimental in the first place? Pre-fucking-cisely.
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@commander@lemmy.world 2026-04-03 15:43
They're propaganda laws. Internet censorship laws. Palestinian genocide started trending on social media and suddenly all the countries out in the west wanted to start banning/controlling social media. Plus the earlier push to ban TikTok by Facebook to try to ladder pull the market from competitors
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@wewbull@feddit.uk 2026-04-04 13:42
> The fallback argument for the social media ban is that it’s better than nothing. But with results like these, it may be worse than nothing, given it potentially creates new problems. Children will remain online with arguably less supervision and support, new privacy and digital security vulnerabilities seem to have appeared and the worst aspects of social media lay largely unaddressed. I wish more people understood this. Changing something can mean you've caused harm unintentionally, even if you haven't identified it yet. Too many people seem to have the thought process "We have to do something! This is something. Let's do this." without ever considering the harm they might do.
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@Baggie@lemmy.zip 2026-04-04 02:40
This and the porn thing have been massively invasive in terms of privacy. It's so transparently just building a database of facial data. It doesn't even make an attempt to comprehensively block everything on the internet, or realistically enforce compliance.
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@someguy3@lemmy.world 2026-04-03 15:10
IMO It's not a question **if** they remain on, but **how much** time they spend on it. She's focusing on the wrong metric.
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@Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 2026-04-03 14:45
AI companies support the age verification laws because they want to ban kids from talking to anyone on the internet except their robot pedophiles
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@M0oP0o@mander.xyz 2026-04-04 04:12
What? There is emence amounts of joy in "I told you so". The majority of people warned them this was a stupid idea and now you want to piss on the good feeling of smug correct calling of the clearly failure idea? Fuck off.
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@TheDarkQuark@lemmy.world 2026-04-03 16:36
How are they getting around it? I thought Australia implemented some sort of ID verification? And given that social media platforms notoriously refuse to run on VPNs, how are the teenagers bypassing the checks? Is everyone there using their parent's ID or something?!
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@Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml 2026-04-03 12:11
The vast majority of new systems throughout history have required some iterative refinement, the fact that this specific implementation attempt didn't work perfectly on day one isn't a particularly strong argument against the concept, and there are plenty of good arguments to be made against it
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@snooggums@piefed.world 2026-04-03 11:31
There is no problem to solve that hasn't already been addressed with parental controls.
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@Scotty_Trees@lemmy.world 2026-04-03 15:23
Former Facebook higher ups have gone on the record to say the Facebook uses destructive algorithms to keep people hooked, they know exactly what they are doing and don't care how it affects us as long as they can squeeze more info from us for more profit. Thinking Silicon Valley tech billionaires actually care about you? Bro, you need to wake up.
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@fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 2026-04-03 11:29
https://agelesslinux.org/citations.html
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@Deceptichum@quokk.au 2026-04-03 11:57
The “good intention” was the packaging. The real intent was population control.
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@rants_unnecessarily@piefed.social 2026-04-03 15:13
And those guys are being led on by the evils.
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@snooggums@piefed.world 2026-04-03 12:23
Limiting total time spent on something is one of the parental control options. It isn't just blocking things 100%.
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@supamanc@lemmy.world 2026-04-03 23:34
That's a bit like saying 'there is a problem with smack/nicotine/alcohol addiction, but the solution is not restriction, it's education'. You can educate all you want, but very clever people make a lot of money by saying 'fuck your education'.
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@Rekorse@sh.itjust.works 2026-04-04 12:12
Well, thats what you get when non-tech people try to regulate tech. At least we have correctly identified a problem, and are now trying to solve it. Tech companies taking advantage of regulators lack of knowledge to continue abusing their customers is a different problem. This solution might not work but we will learn and try something else or refine it until it does work, or until social media somehow isn't predatory and doesnt need the guard rails.
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@supamanc@lemmy.world 2026-04-03 23:59
But the idea that we just need education is ridiculous. It's the exact defence that the social media platforms espous, because they know it's bullshit and ineffective.
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@supamanc@lemmy.world 2026-04-04 00:11
Dunno, I'm not the one paid to come up with solutions. But, at the very least efforts like this teach kids that there is a problem. Like, yeah, we can easily circumvent the measures, but the gov still thinks it necessary to implement them.
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@Rekorse@sh.itjust.works 2026-04-04 13:49
Maybe, just maybe, parents shouldn't let their kids in awful places, and also awful places shouldnt let kids in. Turns out parental controls are bullshit, and the only real answer is RTFM or dont use it at all. A business and its customers dont exist without each other, so the blame is on both sides. All that said, the government definitely could help the parental understand and controls side of thing too using regulation.
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@fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 2026-04-03 13:43
On purporse to keep them trapped in abusive households with no Support
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@emmy67@lemmy.world 2026-04-04 12:33
Kids will often just repeat what they've heard to adults. But the largest problems to these laws is the way they affected minority groups. If followed, the law would disproportionately affect disabled and queer teens who may suddenly be unable to access help and community. I suspect there's some selection bias in the kids you're speaking to.