Australia's social media ban fails to curb teen usage, study finds
Australia's social media ban has failed
Despite Australia's world-first ban on social media for under-16s, a new study reveals that over 80% of teens are still online three months after the restrictions took effect. The government defends the ban as a 'game changer' in parental conversations, but the eSafety research shows usage levels unchanged and parental awareness declining. The ban, introduced in December over mental health concerns, has drawn criticism from US-based tech companies and prompted plans for tougher enforcement.
We never expected that this would have 100% compliance. We don't get 100% compliance out of minimum drinking age laws, but it's still appropriate that we have that law on the books.
- teruakohatu
It has been banned for a few months. Hardly a failure.
It will be a failure if 10 year olds continue to join social media at the rate they have done so in the past.
It’s not likely to get 15 year olds who have been addicted for 5 years off it, anymore than smoking bans have any impact on teens who have been smoking or vaping for years.
- Alien1Being
Here in Australia, every parent I have spoken to is happy about the ban.
The media is predictably unhappy since they lose eyeballs, advertising revenue and money.
Previous approaches like expecting parents to educate children failed miserably.
Most parents lacked at least one or more of motivation, time or knowledge.
- intothemild
I've said this to every single person who pushed for this.
"Imagine you're a teenager, and your parents and government tell you to not do something... What will happen?"
The answer is of course that they keep doing it anyhow. But hide it.
As an Aussie, and a parent. What I wanted was that the government mandate that in order for your website or app to launch in Australia, that if you want to allow kids between certain ages on the website/app. Then you need to have robust parental controls. Create family accounts where you can link parents and children, share whatever tracking/tracing you have with said parents and make it as good as you can. Mandate specific minimum controls based on what kind of type of app/website it is.
Put the control in the hands of the parents, and not this stupid one size fits all approach.
- thesmtsolver2
Banning social media for kids before banning junk food for kids when you have a childhood obesity/health crisis just shows which companies greased the hands that made the laws
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood_obesity_in_Australia
- martinkem
Of course it is going to fail especially if the social media networks are incentivized to make sure that it fails. The penalties should have been set at a per user basis.
- bogomil
I wish I can promote this to the whole internet. this is not the way to control the internet :)
- strogonoff
When we give everyone a computer and want to restrict a group of people from some of its capabilities (for their own good), the consequence is a restricted computer. Not giving everyone that computer in the first place could help ensure it stays a true general purpose computer.
- sermah
Wow. Banning things actually doesn’t work and only makes everyone more secretive. What a surprise!