Clipped from: https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/editorial/experiment-down-under/article70388492.ece
Australia’s social media ban for children, a useful precedent
Australia has banned multiple social media platforms for children under 16 | Photo Credit: Hollie Adams
In a world first, Australia has imposed the most comprehensive measure against social media by banning multiple platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, X, Threads, TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, Kick and Twitch for children under 16. The ban, which is now facing two lawsuits by Reddit and two teenagers, has drawn global attention at a time when the psychological impact of addictive social media use on adolescents is increasingly becoming a concern among parents, governments and educators alike.
Other jurisdictions are already tightening the net. Denmark, France, Germany and the EU have introduced or are planning parental-consent requirements and age-verification rules. India has stopped short of restricting access, but its data protection law requires platforms to secure verifiable parental consent before processing children’s data. Malaysia has gone further, announcing that a ban modelled on Australia’s will be effected by next year. The move was spurred by a tragic case in which a 16-year-old girl died after posting an Instagram poll asking whether she should end her life, an extreme but emblematic example cited by advocates of stringent curbs.
Adding weight to this are powerful hypotheses such as the one forwarded by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt who has argued for no smartphones and ban on social media for children under 16 in his influential book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. Haidt makes a correlation between increasing use of smartphones and rising incidents of anxiety, depression, self-harm among adolescents, especially young girls, and argues for smartphone-free schools. Yet critics contend that the evidence is far from definitive. Candice L Odgers of the University of California, writing in Nature, challenged Haidt’s thesis. Odgers argued that there is no evidence of association between well-being and roll-out of social media globally. There is more research, like a paper in the medical journal JAMA by Yunyu Xiao et al, who followed more than 4,000 adolescents across the US, and concluded that it is not the use of social media per se but “addictive use of social media, mobile phones, or video games” that is associated with “suicidal behaviour and ideation and worse mental health”.
What is clear is that the scientific consensus is still unsettled. It is equally unquestionable that screens and social platforms are here to stay; they offer educational, creative and economic opportunities that should not be dismissed. The emerging policy challenge, therefore, lies not in denying digital reality but in managing its excesses. The addictive design of many platforms needs to be acknowledged and societal and legal boundaries have to be set to mitigate harm. Australia’s bold move will provide a real-world test of whether sweeping restrictions improve adolescent well-being or simply shift harmful behaviours elsewhere. For now, the prudent approach lies in measured, evidence-based regulation.
Published on December 12, 2025
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