You pick up your phone after a long day of school, ready to scroll on your favorite social media app for a few minutes. But what if your account had suddenly been deleted and you were unable to create another one? Starting Dec. 10, this has become the reality for millions of Australian kids under the age of 16 as social media platforms started to enforce new age restrictions.
Australia, on Dec. 10, became the first country in the world to enact a nationwide social media ban for kids under the age of 16, marking a major shift in government regulation of online platforms. This ban sets a global precedent, with proposals of legislation to combat similar issues being debated around the world, including the U.S.
The Australian Parliament passed the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024 on Nov. 29, 2024 after nearly two years of deliberation. Platforms were given one year to prepare for compliance before enforcement.
According to Julie Inman Grant, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, this legislation covers 10 major platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, X and Reddit. Companies are expected to take the necessary steps to ensure that underage users cannot use their platforms, with heavy fines being set for companies that fail to comply with the legislation.
Grant, a key advocate for the ban, has described it as a protective step to give children time to build digital skills before being exposed to social media. However, many see the blanket ban as overreaching, reflecting the tension between protecting children and preserving their digital rights.
The Australian government framed this law as a protective measure. Officials said the law was passed to combat online harms such as mental health risks, cyberbullying, addiction, and sexual exploitation.
The concerns that fueled Australia’s ban are not specific to that country. Many other countries, including Spain and France, have also proposed similar restrictions. In the U.S., lawmakers are exploring how to regulate social media access for children.
Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna introduced a bill in the House on Feb. 5, 2026, aiming to protect kids from social media harms. Her legislation is a companion bill of the Kids Off Social Media Act, which is a bipartisan bill that Hawaiian Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz proposed in the senate on Jan. 28, 2025.
If passed, the Kids Off Social Media Act, which, as stated in the legislation, would prohibit platforms from allowing accounts for children under the age of 13 and algorithmic recommendations for children under the age of 17.
In a 2024 New York Times opinion article, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy wrote, “Legislation from Congress should shield young people from online harassment, abuse, and exploitation and from exposure to extreme violence and sexual content that too often appears in algorithm-driven feeds.”
Stanford psychiatric professor and addiction expert Anna Lembke stated in an email that teen behavior on social media can meet the clinical definition of addiction, which she defined as the compulsive use of a substance despite the harm it causes.
“When kids get addicted to social media, one of the biggest harms is ‘opportunity costs,’ meaning all the things kids are not doing because they’re spending so much time online, like not sleeping, not studying, not moving their bodies, and not socializing in real life,” Lembke said.
Lembke emphasized that excessive social media use is especially detrimental to kids due to side effects such as depression, anxiety, loneliness, and fear of missing out.
“Kids and teens are more vulnerable to social media addiction because they tend to be more sensitive to peer validation,” Lembke stated. “They also tend to underestimate the risks.”
Palo Alto High School AP Computer Science teacher Roxanne Lanzot says that she has seen the effects of social media firsthand.
“From my experience of observing kids in classrooms and observing kids in schools, I absolutely have witnessed a shift in student levels of happiness, levels of pro-social behaviors decreasing, sleep deprivation increasing, and anxiety increasing,” Lanzot said.
Lanzot says she believes that governments taking action is a step in the right direction.
“I am encouraged to see that the Australian government is trying to do what they can to protect their citizens and respond to some sort of more disturbing details about the effects of social media on young people, which I think increasingly are documented and should disturb all of us,” Lanzot said.
Paly sophomore Helen Li says she believes a social media ban will be more harmful than beneficial.
“I don’t think it’ll really address the root problems they say it will help with,” Li said. “For example, if they say it will help mental health, I don’t think it will because banning social media will cut [kids] off from their friends and create worse issues.”
Corynne McSherry, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says that bans like Australia’s risk isolation and cutting teenagers off from important information.
“They [children] need access to information just as much as adults do, and in some cases, more than some adults do because they don’t have the kind of ability and agency that an adult has,” McSherry said.
Concerns have also been raised about this law’s implementation and its legal implications. McSherry says similar proposed bans in the U.S. would not comply with the First Amendment.
“The First Amendment protects our right to access information as well as our right to receive and as well as our right to speak,” McSherry said. “…A ban means you don’t have access. You’ve cut off access to all kinds of speech, and that’s where it gets overboard. It prevents your ability to speak to many, many audiences, and that’s a pretty obvious problem under the First Amendment.”
Beyond the loss of speech, McSherry says that the enforcement of a social media ban is problematic and forces users to give up their right to stay anonymous.
“There’s the other problem of how do you enforce a ban without basically spying on people or deputizing companies to spy on people,” McSherry said. “There’s been some proposals that will require people to show an ID before they can access the internet or access particular sites. And for lots of people, showing an ID is not a small burden.”
Lembke says that she treats these types of bans as a policy experiment, in the sense that it remains to be seen if the ban actually keeps kids off of these platforms.
“Kids are amazingly good at circumventing safeguards,” Lembke stated. “But implementation aside, I think what Australia has done is a good thing. … Maybe it won’t work, but we have to start trying something to improve the mental well-being of kids.”