SYDNEY – Australia has just pushed through what many are calling the strictest social media rules for young people anywhere in the world. Federal Parliament has passed a law that bans anyone under 16 from having accounts on TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Reddit, and YouTube.
The law received royal assent last week and is due to start in around 12 months. It forces platforms to roll out age-verification tools and threatens them with fines of up to AUD $50 million if they fail to comply on a large scale.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has sold the change as a public-health measure. “We’re taking action to protect our kids from the harms of social media, the anxiety, the bullying, the exposure to dangerous content,” he told reporters outside Parliament House.
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland backed him in, pointing to research that links heavy social media use with higher rates of depression, self-harm, and body-image problems among teenagers.
On the surface, the case sounds convincing. But once the policy is looked at more closely, it starts to look less like a child-safety plan and more like a trial run for broad state control over how a whole generation uses the internet.
The Double Standard: Puberty Blockers Allowed, Social Media Banned
If the government truly believed that 13-year-olds lack the maturity to make informed choices, that logic would apply across the board. It does not. In the same country where a 13-year-old cannot legally sign up for Instagram without exposing Meta to massive fines, that same teenager can attend certain gender clinics, be prescribed puberty blockers, and begin a medical pathway that may lead to permanent infertility and major surgery.
In many cases, there is no clear minimum age in law and the consent checks are looser than those used for buying alcohol.
The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, along with several state health services, openly state that there is “no minimum age” for starting hormone blockers if a child is judged to have “Gillick competence”. That legal test was originally designed for issues like contraception, not lifelong medical transition.
So Australia now claims that a 13-year-old is too young to scroll Instagram Reels, but old enough to halt their hormonal development using drugs that the Cass Review in the UK said were supported by “remarkably weak evidence”.
Critics from across the spectrum, including free-speech advocates and gender-critical feminists, have seized on this contradiction.
“This isn’t about evidence-based protection,” says Katherine Deves, co-founder of Women’s Forum Australia, a group linked with the Australian Greens. “It’s about the state choosing which kinds of identity development it will support and which it will punish.”
A Ban That Kids Can Bypass In An Afternoon
For all the tough talk in Canberra, people who actually build and test technology say the law is easy to work around.
The new rules rely on a grab-bag of age checks approved by the government. That includes biometric age estimates, uploading government ID, or using third-party “digital identity” services. None of these tools is perfect, and many are simple to dodge, especially for teenagers who grew up online.
Some of the basic workarounds include:
| Method | How It Works | Effectiveness & Risks | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| VPN (Virtual Private Network) | Masks the IP address to appear as if accessing from outside Australia (e.g., US or UK servers), potentially skipping geo-specific checks. | High initially; platforms like Meta may detect VPNs via traffic patterns or require ID regardless. Surge predicted, as in the UK’s age rules. Parents reported teaching kids about VPN use. | Cybernews guide; BBC; [post:3] @OmBi006; [post:5] @comical_engr; [post:6] @freevpnus; [post:7] @NoughtnXs |
| Lying About Age / Fake Profiles | Enter a false birthdate during signup or create new accounts with adult-like details. | Easy but short-lived; platforms use AI to flag inconsistencies (e.g., post history, friends’ ages). Teens plan pre-ban fake setups. | BBC teen interviews; 7NEWS student quotes; [post:2] The Australian |
| Parental Assistance | Parents use their ID or face for verification on a shared/family account, or set up joint profiles. | Common; no legal repercussions for parents, but platforms may limit multi-user accounts. Some families are switching to parent-monitored setups. | 7NEWS; Guardian parent interviews; [post:2] The Australian |
| Facial Manipulation / AI Tools | Use makeup, filters, deepfakes, or AI to appear older in selfies/videos for age estimation. | Variable; platforms must counter fakes, but early adoption is expected. One teen suggested makeup for scans. | eSafety FAQs; [post:2] The Australian |
| Alternative Platforms | Migrate to unregulated apps like Discord, WhatsApp group chats, or emerging services (e.g., Lemon8, which may later be added). | Very effective for staying connected; no age gates on many. Could push activity to riskier, less moderated spaces. | Independent; Sydney Uni; [post:3] @OmBi006; [post:8] @spikedonline |
| Data Archiving & Offline Prep | Download content pre-ban to preserve memories, then reconnect via exempt tools. | Not a direct bypass but mitigates loss; advised for all users. | eSafety; Independent |
A 16-year-old student in Melbourne who spoke on condition of anonymity laughed when asked if the ban would change anything. “My little brother is 12 and already has three burner Snapchats. The only thing this law will do is teach every kid under 16 how to use a VPN before they learn algebra,” she said.
Pushing Kids Into More Dangerous Online Spaces
Experts who work directly with at-risk young people are among the harshest critics. They argue that, far from making children safer, the ban will drive them off large, moderated platforms and into corners of the internet where there is almost no oversight.
Susan McLean, Australia’s best-known cyber-safety educator and a former Victoria Police officer, put it bluntly.
“Kids will move to places that don’t ask for ID, Discord servers, Telegram channels, 4chan copies, private Minecraft worlds, random video-chat sites like Omegle used to be. That’s where predators already operate. Parliament has just delivered them a fresh intake on a platter.”
Experience overseas supports this warning. When South Korea brought in a law that blocked minors from online gaming between midnight and 6 a.m., official platforms saw fewer young users. At the same time, VPN use went up, and underground gaming cafés boomed. The risks did not disappear; they shifted into darker, harder-to-monitor spaces.
The Hidden Agenda: Normalising Digital ID
Once the child-safety slogans are stripped away, what remains is a major expansion of government control over online access and speech.
The legislation sets up the skeleton of a national age-verification system that can later be reused for other types of content. Today, it is social media. Tomorrow, it could be gambling sites, alcohol sales, pornography, or even political material labelled as “harmful”.
Australia’s eSafety Commissioner already has strong powers to order the removal of content. Under this new regime, her office will effectively decide which parts of the internet anyone born after 2009 is allowed to use.
A frustrated executive from a large US tech firm summed it up off the record. “Australia has just volunteered to be the pilot project for any government that wants to lock its people out of the global internet. And they are wrapping it in child-safety language so no one feels they can object.”
A Policy That Will Backfire On A Whole Generation
Few people deny that social media can harm young users. Algorithms are designed to hook attention. Bullying can follow children home. Body-image pressure and self-harm content are real problems.
But blocking an entire age group from mainstream social platforms is like banning cars because some teenagers crash. It avoids the hard work of education and support and replaces it with blanket control.
The ban strips young people of the chance to build digital literacy at a time when they need it most. It trains them to see risk as something that must be met with prohibition and surveillance, not skills, boundaries, and critical thinking.
It also delivers a clear message that Canberra does not trust parents to manage their own children’s online lives.
In a year, when the ban has officially started, and kids are still on social media through VPNs, burner phones, and underground apps, it will be hard to ignore the outcome.
Children will not have been protected in any meaningful way. Instead, a whole generation will have learned how to move online without leaving tracks, and how simple it is to slip out of sight of their own government.
That lesson, more than any dance trend on TikTok, may prove to be the real damage.
