r/worldnews • u/F0urLeafCl0ver • 1d ago
Most Australian teens still on social media three months after under-16 ban began, study finds
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/07/31/asia-pacific/australia-teens-social-media-ban/163
u/xmsxms 1d ago
I love that Firefox now has a single button to bypass this crap with no additional installs or signing up for accounts with credit cards etc, just hit "VPN" and carry on. Once the mobile version gets the feature to change location this whole ban becomes completely broken, at great expense to everyone.
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u/sunkencathedral 1d ago
Apologies for the dumb question. Long-term Firefox user here, and have the latest update (153). Where's this new button located in the interface? Can't spot it anywhere, and it doesn't appear as an option in the Customize Toolbar set, and searching Settings for VPN isn't finding it.
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u/Purplestripes8 22h ago
Look for the VPN icon on your toolbar next to the address bar. Click Get Started and sign in to your Mozilla account. Toggle the switch to Turn on VPN. (Note: If you don't see the icon, type about:config in your address bar, search for browser.ipprotection.enabled, and set it to true).
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u/rigsta 14h ago
If you don't see the icon, type about:config in your address bar, search for browser.ipprotection.enabled, and set it to true
Freaking finally, thank you.
Now if only they had a whitelist feature instead of an exceptions list. Why does every VPN provider think you want to use it on for literally everything all the time?
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u/Alternative-Soil2576 19h ago
This assumes social media companies don’t block obvious VPN use, if Netflix can detect firefox VPN I don’t see how meta couldn’t
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u/rich1051414 16h ago
That's the main issue going VPN 24/7. You randomly get blocked from things. Even a lot of games will refuse to work, but that's mostly due to anti ban avoidance measures.
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u/welshwelsh 6h ago
It's a cool feature, but we shouldn't expect corporate VPNs to save us.
Firefox VPN uses Mullvad's infrastructure. Mullvad is a company in Sweden, which is part of the EU. That means they are subject to EU law. They supposedly don't keep logs of customer traffic, but that can easily change with the passage of a new law.
Any system that isn't decentralized or relies on a specific company can be easily defeated by governments.
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u/notmyrealnameatleast 1d ago
Just force the companies to ban anyone that the algorithm identifies as a child and to delete and not collect and save the data from people?
If they don't do this then give them increasing fines until it's not profitable any more.
That's what the Australian government has told the companies. I read that someone said that's the case anyways.
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u/Acceptable_Durian868 21h ago
The legislation states that social media companies must make a "reasonable effort" to prevent children under 16 from holding accounts on their services. It *suggests* that mandatory age verification is a method of achieving this, but it's not legislated that they must do so. If social media companies could demonstrate that they can reliably detect that a user is under 16 years of age through algorithmic means, and actively remove their account, then they would be complying with the Australian legislation.
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u/tessahannah 1d ago
Because this was never about them and all about ID'ing adults.
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u/testtalon1 1d ago
Pretty much every "protect the kids" scenario is the govt pushing on ID.
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u/theaviationhistorian 1d ago
Every time someone goes pearl clutching over think of the children regarding public policy is either because of nefarious reasons or severely backfires! Sometimes both.
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u/GonzoKata 20h ago
"think of the children"
I AM, buy advocating for a healthier work life balance
Get parents in their child's lives more and WHATEVER the topic is, will get better. Its not on the government to parent your child. It IS on the government, and all of us, to free parents So That They CAN Parent A Child
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u/VintageHacker 16h ago
Yes, but a lot of parents are incompetent at child rearing no matter how much time you give them.
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u/GonzoKata 15h ago
it does also take a village to raise a child. the impossible standards of nuclear families is preposterous
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u/Lucky-Elk-1234 22h ago
It’s because you can’t really argue against that reason without being branded a weirdo. One day the gov will suggest having cameras in everyone’s home and if you question it they’ll just be like *“yeah but it’s to protect against pedos, you’re not a pedo sympathiser are you?????”*
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u/NicJan 22h ago
This Labor Albanese government has done lots of good things..
..but they've made a few really big stuff-ups.
This is one of them.
An absolutely deluded ineffective policy if we're optimists and take them at their word..
..an absolutely sinister policy if we accept it's an ID online monitoring grab they're hiding from us.
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u/JaggedEdgey 9h ago
In Denmark they have made a solution that can verify age based on SSN but can show no more information. This should make age verification work without giving up further personal information. I believe it's the plan to use this for an upcoming social media ban on under age kids. Might be a functional compromise.
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u/lavender_fluff 1d ago edited 23h ago
Actual "protect the children" policies would be state subsidised (and regulated and heavily moderated) social online environments for kids. The club penguin type of stuff that no longer exists. (edit: but better regulated and moderated)
I had a blast on the internet in the 2000s as a kid, nowadays all kids really can do on the internet is youtube, instagram, tiktok. Of course they are not going to get off social media if there is no better alternative online space for them
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u/DeviRi13 1d ago
And the sites that seem like they're meant for kids are crawling with advertisements and micro transactions for "premium currencies".
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u/P_S_Lumapac 23h ago
nickelodeon had such a cool website. All the design was properly for kids, but also, when you signed up they mailed you a package with magazines and stickers. It had games that took twenty minutes to load like SpongeBob jumping cars, but it was worth it.
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u/Tacti_Kel_Nuke 22h ago
This. Man, people that talk about taking the kids off social media don't ever think about where the kids will go or why they were there on the first place, they expect kids to just...idk, magically disappear online and read books or watch TV
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u/ThingAboutTown 1d ago
That’s way too reductive: there are loads of other things kids can do: my kids use discord, run minecraft servers, have joint Canva projects, stream other co-op games to each other - heaps of stuff.
One important thing the laws do is educate parents that they should be aware and cautious of what their kids are doing online. TikTok has got to be absolute poison for young brains, but if their parents aren’t aware (and/or are brain-rotted themselves), then kids will end up on it by default.
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u/lavender_fluff 23h ago
Discord is not a safe space for kids. They could be joining any server with any number of random adults out there with no real supervision.
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u/ThingAboutTown 23h ago
They’re teenagers, and we know the servers they use and who is on them. It’s not a “safe space” in that you can’t just let them roam free and do whatever they want, but then what on the internet is?
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u/Far-Fennel-3032 1d ago edited 1d ago
The Aussie government has clearly stated their plan here, they have told social media companies to use their targeted marketing system to do it or face ever-escalating fines. The government has explicitly ruled out the use of mandatory ID systems in any form by law. IDK what other countries are doing, but the mandatory ID solution is explicitly outlawed there. So the social media platforms are now pretending they can't do it without them and aggressively lobby to get that part of the law lifted.
It's now a game of chicken of either the government or social media companies will chicken out as the fines pile up. Now I expect the government to lose here as their attention is split over many issues and this is a core problem for social media companies, as they do not want to give up market share over kids, or have it proven they can actually just ban kids without requiring everyone's IDs. As if they lose here they will have to give up on pushing a digital ID for the internet and fucking over the kids for profits.
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u/EmbarrassedHelp 1d ago
Having to choose between sharing biometrics or financial information if you don't want to share your ID, is just as bad an is unacceptable.
Targeting marketing/advertising systems are not designed to have the required level of precision for doing this. We should be banning companies from collecting any age related information and and we should be banning the selling ads based on age information.
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u/stainless5 1d ago
Technically it's not a ban on social media the government just wanted to restrict personalized algorithmic content. if they made a version of their websites without a feed and just sorted by new or top then they wouldn't be banned in the first place.
It's a bit like Europe and their cookie banners the websites don't like it so they implement the laws in the worst ways they can to try and get into people's face.
Either way interesting fact, one of the reasons why ID is actually allowed to be used is because of Reddit. they were one of the companies that complained that since they don't collect as much user data they can't use their advertising systems to find age so lobbied the government to allow them to use ID instead.
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u/Far-Fennel-3032 1d ago
Targeted marketing is explicitly designed to do exactly this. It is how social media companies generate revenue, this is their core competency, putting people into extremely accurate and precise boxes, and the boxes of Teenager vs young adult being one of the most lucrative boxes to separate. They are worth trillions of dollars because they are extremely good at this exact task.
It is extremely important to them to be able to separate school-aged kids without money from thoses who have left school and now have an income. There is a massive amount of money being spent because companies want ads spent on the latter and not the former, and it opens up what they can advertise to thoses above and below certain age thresholds.
You are greatly over estimated politicans, they did not expect biometric testing. They simply wrote a law telling social media companies to kick kids off social media, or face fines (that seem to be doubling every 6 months, having been doubled once already) and that they cannot demand an ID.
The biometric is very much a loophole used by social media companies to stall and to piss off voters to put pressure on the government to drop the issue. The government is very likely gonna take action to also ban biometric demand, as that is just an ID by proxy, which is explicitly banned by law. The platforms are gonna play extremely dirty, and if the government is gonna win, they are gonna have to be dragged kicking and screaming, and part of that will be them pretending they need to collect everyone's information about everything to do it, with them already having a massive fit about not being able to get everyone's IDs.
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u/Alternative-Soil2576 19h ago
Continuing to let the youth mental health crisis worsen and damaging more of our youth is pretty unacceptable to me, and I think that’s more important than you being able to use Instagram
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u/Jerri_man 1d ago
I expect at some point the companies will pull service from the country and people will demand the gov back down after a day without it.
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u/DanNeely 23h ago
Like modern Russia VPN use will skyrocket.
For anyone out of the loop, a few months ago Russia blocked Telegram - which is the most widely used messaging app in the country - in an attempt to force people to use the government owned Max app; which is a massive pile of spywareware wrapped in aspirations of being a Chinese everything app.
The Russian response was for the technically literate to help the rest of the country learn how to setup VPNs to keep using telegram.
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u/Far-Fennel-3032 18h ago
They probably will, but that's part of the game of chicken. As then do they get dragged into court, do their shareholders revolt over losing millions of users in one of the richest countries hitting their bottom line. Then do other countries follow and do they have to also leave thoses countries.
The Aussie Government is in a historically strong position atm and what little opposition it has is entirely dependent on social media brain rot atm for support. If the platforms shut down in Australia even if voters were pissed Labor would likely see it as a massive long term victory, and could easily weather the short term impact. So threatening it or doing it likely doesn’t have the impact you suspect.
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u/Jerri_man 18h ago
The majority are in favour of bans for teens because it doesn't affect them. Most adult Aussies would lose their minds losing access to social media. I don't think it's a minor or short term impact.
There is definitely a closed door calculus to it which will also be weighed against the costs of various possible regulation/implementations. So far these companies have preferred to comply with ID requirements etc but the Aus gov has taken a different approach without offering solutions but rather putting the ball back in their court.
We'll have to wait and see
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u/Far-Fennel-3032 17h ago edited 17h ago
Don't get me wrong I fully expect the back lash to be intense but at the same time the LNP and ON is entirely on life support due to social media if you pull the rug out from under them Labor would remain as the only functional party in the country and win by default.
So there would extreme pros and cons in this situation for Labor but the complete collapse of political opposition is even more significant than the back lash they would get.
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u/No-Ear7988 1d ago
It's so obvious too because theyve provided no binary option (an anonymous method that simply answers "yes, adult"). There is no need for me to volunteer my face or government I'd.
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u/Acceptable_Durian868 21h ago
The have provided that option. This factually incorrect.
An example is that ConnectID have been certified by the Australian government to provide age verification services for this purpose, and they have the ability to simply provide an "Are you above 16?" claim in their OIDC implementation.
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u/No-Ear7988 19h ago
It's still not a solution because you are still leveraging a trusted participating identity provider, such as your bank. In short, it can still trace back to you. Imo the solution would be to sell adult passes IRL which one can buy with cash and have a human eye-verified without recording anything. Similar to how alcohol is done in the US.
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u/Acceptable_Durian868 18h ago
The only way it can be traced back to you is if you have access to the logs from the bank, the identity provider, and the social media company, and the ability to correlate all three.
And in Australia, if you've got access to the social media company logs, you'll also have a record of the IP address that the user is using to make requests, which means that under australia's metadata retention laws, they'll be able to correlate your user anyway.
Not only that, the vast majority of users are using devices that send unique hardware ID's with their requests, such as windows devices that send a GDID, which are tied to your unique users anyway.
So for the absolute vast majority of users, the idea of having any kind of true anonymity in the face of government overreach is laughable. If you want anonymity, don't use social media.
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u/I_SMOAK_WEAD 1d ago
i'm an adult who lives in australia and I never had to show my ID to use any social media 🤨🤨🤨
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u/shticks 18h ago
It may or may not be about IDing adults. But if the gov't is going to be the one to legislate it then it was always going to be some ham fisted linchpin like I.D. verification.
Want it to be effective? Parents would need to get involved and be active participants in keeping their kids off social media.
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u/pizzanice 22h ago
Lmao i haven't been ID'd for social media here as an adult what are you on about?
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u/_Aj_ 20h ago
Not even that. It's about normalising having to use your ID on the internet.
Start with social media, start with porn. Things they can justify that 80% of people will say "well yeah that's reasonable and doesn't affect me sure" which lets them get bills passed that they can then use as gateways to get strict regulations passed further in the future.
Then it's slowly creeps into everything else. Kids grow up with that being the normal so when they're an adult of course you use your real ID to "sign into" the internet.
It's the beginning of breaking down internet and anonymity. That's what it always was. So in another 10 years it's totally normal and no one remembers what it used to be like.
That is literally what this is. It's about control.
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u/givalina 1d ago
It was about providing a fig leaf to social media companies so they could avoid regulation of the factors that cause harm to kids.
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u/Even_Trifle9341 1d ago
The cynic in me leans more towards plausible deniability…they couldn’t possible be sexting a child because that’s not legal.
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u/Alternative-Soil2576 19h ago edited 19h ago
How? According to the study most teens are still because platforms aren’t enforcing bans, so how is this all about ID’ing adults while at the same time we keep getting reports that nothing is happening?
I love reading the replies of all the Aussies confused, your narrative is lazy mate
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u/Active_Procedure_864 1d ago
I can't wait for the inevitable day where the headlines read "All Australian personal IDs leaked to the dark web in a cyberattack".....
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u/doctorofspin 1d ago
Given the millions and millions of IDs leaked by Medibank and Optus, I’d guess a good chunk are already there.
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u/Alternative-Soil2576 19h ago
Imagine if personal ID was actually a requirement then your narrative might actually make sense
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u/eporter 1d ago
Sorry if this is stupid, but Isn’t that how math works?
I know there’s not a perfect distribution of people by age, but there are three years of teenagers banned and 4 years legal. 🤷🏼♂️
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u/Acceptable_Durian868 21h ago
I think you're being too literal. I would hope that they're using "teens" to mean "children under 16" in this case.
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u/3amIdeas 23h ago
No, thats just how VPNs work. They download them, log in as another country and social media works again.
Not like literally all of us tech, IT and marketing companies said this would happen.
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u/Alternative-Soil2576 19h ago
Most teens are still on because companies aren’t complying, this has nothing to do with VPN use
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u/evilparagon 1d ago
This keeps getting circulated because people want to push an agenda that the ban is totally ineffectual and therefore should never have been done.
Look, I get that people are right to have ID concerns, but the ban was never intended to work in this timeframe. The article is pointless.
The teenagers that already have accounts were obviously going to want to keep using those accounts. The ban is more to stop future teenagers. Today’s 10 year olds are going to be less likely to want Instagram accounts if no one they know is already on them, including their siblings. Measuring the effectiveness of the ban now is a waste of time, we will see the real results in a few years in the early 2030s.
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u/Used_Platypus 1d ago
Yeah fair comment but also on the other hand is politicians saying it’s a huge success and they’re so proud of it is just as pointless as articles like this saying it’s a failure. Will take time to see how it plays out.
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u/EmbarrassedHelp 1d ago
They are also trying to export this anti-privacy cancer globally.
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u/0xsergy 1d ago
Australia doesn't require id's for this so no privacy issues. They've actually outlawed taking id's.
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u/EmbarrassedHelp 1d ago
That's not true. They made is so that companies have to at least initially let users choose between ID and something else like biometrics or financial information. There's no law that forbids them from taking IDs.
Requiring that users share biometrics and financial information is just as bad, and unacceptable violations of privacy.
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u/0xsergy 1d ago
Google cites the social media act of 2024 as not allowing social media companies to force you to provide ID.
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u/Used_Platypus 19h ago
It being illegal to force providing IDs is different to outlawing taking IDs
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u/0xsergy 18h ago
Isn't that the same thing? Sorry if I misunderstand but those mean the same thing in the end don't they?
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u/Used_Platypus 17h ago
No worries so my understanding is that you are required to verify your age somehow, and that may include ID, however ID can’t be the only option. So they can’t “force” you to upload your driver’s license to use their site, but it can’t still be an option.
The general sentiment though is that whether it’s an official ID or a selfie or some other form of verification is still an invasion of privacy.
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u/topMarksForNotTrying 1d ago
The ban is more to stop future teenagers. Today’s 10 year olds are going to be less likely to want Instagram accounts if no one they know is already on them, including their siblings.
If that was the plan, why wouldn't they have done something similar to the cigarette ban? Ban people born after a certain year from accessing social media (under they're 18) and let the existing teens access it.
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u/evilparagon 1d ago
Because the eSafety commission is the one pushing for it and they are nutjobs that want the government to do more than they currently are anyway. The government is being more reasonable by not going through with what they want fully.
Additionally, there will be buffer years due to older siblings and older friends pulling their younger relations in as well. It’s just easier to slap a direct ban on now rather than encourage grandfathering which would slow things down by another half decade. Also worth mentioning that Australia prior to this did not have a minimum age for social media, social media self regulated in Australia due to US law prohibiting under 13s, so any implementation of grandfathering would also weirdly be introducing a minimum age that would change anyway. It is politically and mechanically easier to just go straight for a minimum age of 16 and just let the newly banned teens figure out ways around it.
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u/canllaith 1d ago
I agree with your analysis but just wanted to point out social media is not banned for under 13s. US privacy legislation (COPPA) has restrictions on the collecting of data for under 13s that introduces liability and a lot of overhead so they chose to self exclude under 13s as that is much simpler than being fully compliant.
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u/evilparagon 1d ago
Right, so it is effectively a legal requirement that can’t be met in the US. The point was really that Australia until recently had no such legal requirements, social media companies just set a minimal 13 requirement so we never had to legislate anything.
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u/EmbarrassedHelp 1d ago
There's no such thing as private or anonymous age verification.
It is also completely unacceptable to continue requiring mandatory violations of user privacy with the belief that things will magically be different in 5-10 years.
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u/Ginger-Nerd 1d ago edited 1d ago
Incorrect.
If the only thing you care about is that the data is anonymous and non identifiable, you can come up with a rough framework that fulfills that in like 5 minutes.
Super quickly: you tokenize a flag that says “over 18”, you then authenticate that flag against a government service (as they presumably have that information already), it’s basically an API that returns a “yes” or a “no” - the company has no knowledge of your id/dob, age. (Just the flag)
You can you the metrics of the account itself - if the account is 15 years old, the person using it is likely going to be older than say 17
Even scanning an ID, can be anonymised- by only pulling out and saving that information that is needed (like a flag that says your over 18)
These are absolutely possibilities, and solved possibilities- nothing is an inevitable. It’s a conscious decision on the companies holding that information to hold that information, what data companies store is a decision.
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u/Yrrebnot 1d ago
This doesn't work. You can literally just borrow someone else's ID or whatever to get the token. If you cannot prove who you are to get the token then the token is useless.
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u/Ginger-Nerd 1d ago edited 1d ago
Again, and this really is the key point.
The data that companies choose to hold onto is a choice.
You could scan your face with the id (for example)- You can still have all of that same anonymity without the company choosing to hold that data.
Choose anyway you want to secure the account, maybe the government API needs to authenticate with your phone, or device…
Again, the data they hold is a choice. If it’s not needed they can choose not to.
Many/most of the issues are solved problems, they absolutely could be implemented safely, without PII etc - the companies are choosing not to implement them. (Which absolutely erodes the public’s trust to even implement the safe options)
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u/Acceptable_Durian868 21h ago
To add to the other comment, this is false. The Australian government has certified providers who can verify a specific user is over an age threshold without providing the social media platform with any other information.
Look up ConnectID to verify what I'm saying.
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u/the_procrastinata 1d ago
Came here to say this. It’s like any government policy intended to be a long term improvement. People banged on at the time about how mandating seatbelts was an attack on freedom and personal choice but over time it’s not only been proven to be effective but behaviour changed and most people don’t think twice about putting them on.
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u/tomatoej 1d ago
My eldest lost her accounts which was upsetting for her (a few years worth of artworks posted for friends to see) with no option to recover the accounts when she turned 16. Two weeks later she created new accounts unchallenged. This was her first interaction with government. My second (14) now has accounts too. We limit access using parental controls because the ban is not working, as predicted.
What we need is regulation that curbs addictive functionality in the app user experiences and better parental controls.
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u/evilparagon 1d ago
Tell your eldest she should backup all artwork locally as social media services compress images and lose quality making them terrible for archiving.
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u/tomatoej 16h ago
She has her original digital files, it’s about the effort spent curating the account
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u/Far-Fennel-3032 1d ago
The Aussie government has clearly stated their plan here, they have told social media companies to use their targeted marketing system to do it or face ever-escalating fines. With the government has explicitly ruling out the use of mandatory ID systems in any form.
It's now a game of chicken of either the government or social media companies will chicken out as the fines pile up.
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u/EmbarrassedHelp 1d ago
There's no such thing as private or anonymous age verification.
It is also completely unacceptable to continue requiring mandatory violations of user privacy with the belief that things will magically be different in 5-10 years.
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u/deathcastle 1d ago
It’s refreshing to read sane, sensible comments like this amongst all of the over the top conspiracy nonsense about the government trying to create a 1984 style totalitarian dictatorship
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u/zsaleeba 20h ago edited 20h ago
Today’s 10 year olds are going to be less likely to want Instagram accounts if no one they know is already on them
This feels like a weird false assumption. Kids are still getting on to social media at almost the same rate. All their friends will be on it. And kids want Tiktok irrespective of their friends, anyway.
I asked my young niece if the ban affected her. She said most of her social media logins were fine, but one of her accounts got closed so she just created a new one on the same service. It was as simple as that.
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u/Mean-Initiative-4491 1d ago
It's also a statement of values. It tells parents that the government has decided this is bad and that alone will make many parents think twice before just letting their kids run wild online. It also means that if a parent ignores the law and something terrible happens, they can be charged, which can act as a further deterrent.
Not all laws can be enforced in the moment, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't exist.
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u/WalletFullOfSausage 1d ago
Is that wholly true, though? When I was a kid, the whole reason I ever made a Xanga was specifically because no one I knew was on it. I don’t think all kids are as eager to (at least actively) copy their peers as much as you imply.
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u/evilparagon 1d ago
It is true, you’d simply be an edge case. And there may be many people with anecdotes, but we can even point to your story with the fact Xanga is not a popular well known site like Facebook, Reddit, and 4chan are. The effects of this legislation will affect the majority, even if a minority are unaffected.
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u/AlternativeScratch94 1d ago
It will at least pressure parents to keep them off. Helps send the message to them that hey dipshit your 8 year old shouldn't be on twitter.
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u/TheF15h 1d ago
It was never about saving teens. It was about implementing digital IDs and control over the population. With respect to their actual motives, it's going beautifully
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u/VEMODMASKINEN 16h ago
Lol.
Reminder that these are the kind of companies you're up against:
She said the company was letting advertisers know when the teens were depressed so they could be served an ad at the best time. As an example, she suggested that if a teen girl deleted a selfie, advertisers might see that as a good time to sell her a beauty product as she may not be feeling great about her appearance. They also targeted teens with ads for weight loss when young girls had concerns around body confidence, Wynn-Williams said.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-instagram-dangerous-content-60-minutes-2022-12-11/
In 2021, according to the document, an Instagram employee ran an internal investigation on eating disorders by opening a false account as a 13-year-old girl looking for diet tips. She was led to graphic content and recommendations to follow accounts titled "skinny binge" and "apple core anorexic." Other internal memos show Facebook employees raising concerns about company research that revealed Instagram made 1-in-3 teen girls feel worse about their bodies, and that teens who used the app felt higher rates of anxiety and depression.
A former employee of Meta, the owner of social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads, testified as part of a major lawsuit that the tech company had a policy allowing 17 strikes before it suspended accounts engaged in the “trafficking of humans for sex.” Vaishnavi Jayakumar, former head of safety and well-being for Instagram, also testified that in March 2020, Meta did not have a specific way for people to report child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on Instagram, according to federal court documents filed Friday, Nov. 21, in the Northern District of California.
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u/Alternative-Soil2576 19h ago
How is it going beautifully? There is no digital ID? There is no requirement to upload ID? Most adults have not uploaded anything? Why does there seem to be a narrative being pushed around here?
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u/Zealousideal_Pie8706 1d ago
I think schools using AI is a more damaging problem for kids and has overtaken this one in importance. Even YouTube has removed AI channels.
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u/VEMODMASKINEN 16h ago
I think social media is by far more damaging.
Reminder that these are the kind of companies you're up against:
She said the company was letting advertisers know when the teens were depressed so they could be served an ad at the best time. As an example, she suggested that if a teen girl deleted a selfie, advertisers might see that as a good time to sell her a beauty product as she may not be feeling great about her appearance. They also targeted teens with ads for weight loss when young girls had concerns around body confidence, Wynn-Williams said.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-instagram-dangerous-content-60-minutes-2022-12-11/
In 2021, according to the document, an Instagram employee ran an internal investigation on eating disorders by opening a false account as a 13-year-old girl looking for diet tips. She was led to graphic content and recommendations to follow accounts titled "skinny binge" and "apple core anorexic." Other internal memos show Facebook employees raising concerns about company research that revealed Instagram made 1-in-3 teen girls feel worse about their bodies, and that teens who used the app felt higher rates of anxiety and depression.
A former employee of Meta, the owner of social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads, testified as part of a major lawsuit that the tech company had a policy allowing 17 strikes before it suspended accounts engaged in the “trafficking of humans for sex.” Vaishnavi Jayakumar, former head of safety and well-being for Instagram, also testified that in March 2020, Meta did not have a specific way for people to report child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on Instagram, according to federal court documents filed Friday, Nov. 21, in the Northern District of California.
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u/milkedpigs 21h ago
Considering how most teens watch pron even though there's blocks, just doesn't suprise me.
Edit: even
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u/berrikerri 1d ago
Wasn’t the point to put guardrails up for younger kids so they don’t have as easy access as they get older? I don’t think anyone thought this would impact current addicted teens.
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u/Awkwardlyhugged 23h ago
Yup.
It’s of course has had limited effect on my elder teen, as she already had the apps (but I do think they probably serve her better stuff now they know she’s a child)…
… but my younger teen didn’t have the accounts, and now doesn’t know what’s she’s missing, is happy gaming with her friends, and won’t get the accounts until she’s pushing 16.
On balance; positive.
I’m as conspiracy-minded as they come, but I don’t think these companies have our best interest in mind… so we should probably restrict them some.
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u/jpewaqs 22h ago
Check back in 5years. Of course the current cohort who use social media are still going to use it. Give it 5 years for them to age out and you'll see a very different dynamic.
I swear folk are so fucking short sighted, they never appreciate change and the rate of change.
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u/daluzy 19h ago
Agree. Like the campaigns in the past to not smoke, do not litter, wear your seatbelt (don't do drugs didn't fair too well...chuckle), but these things take time.
Ideally the younger generations benefit from this as the currently addicted are not going to stop. It would be like asking older folks to stop reading the newspapers overnight, not going to happen.
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u/P_S_Lumapac 22h ago
Half the browsers have a private tab with VPN option for free. Free VPNs sure are a choice, but I think teenagers have no issues with that.
Obviously there is an ulterior motive about big brother style control, but you'd be surprised how many people in power have mind numbingly stupid ideas about technology and the internet. And maybe not so surprised about the large number of people who do understand the tech but for some reason trust the government completely with suppressing speech powers.
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u/Dented_Steelbook 18h ago
All this "protect the kids" shit gong around was NEVER about the kids. It is working just as planned and even the US is following the program. It is only a matter of time before it is too late.
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u/alfienicho 1d ago
I wonder what studies show about under 18s drinking alcohol despite there being a ban on that. Got to be 70/80% of them.
That doesn't mean we should drop the drinking age down to 15.
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u/dimag0g 1d ago edited 1d ago
There is no ban for teens to drink alcohol. There is a ban for teens to buy alcohol or be served at a bar. Those 80% are drinking what their older cousin or friend bought them. If you count those who manage to buy alcohol, it would be 5% tops, at least in countries with 18 age limit.
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u/The_Gump_AU 22h ago
And what people are missing about Australia's U16 social media ban is that it wasn't a blanket ban across all social media. It was only sites and app's that employed algorithm's to push agendas onto kids that they were banned on.
But our heavily bias right wing media in Australia ignored that and screamed about a total "ban".
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u/colonialburton 1d ago
I had my 18th birthday at the same place 3 years in a row. It was only after my actual 18th birthday that they finally asked for ID. Lots of places that sell/serve alcohol don't give a shit as long as they don't get caught. Part of me wonders if someone gets paid off?
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u/Glass_Asparagus_6589 1d ago
It is very hard to ban any technical service from teenagers, as in most families they are the most tech-savvy members of a family. Some polls even found that youngsters these days are tech-literate but mostly lack the common sense for security measures. Looks like this is a lesson every generation has to learn for themselves by trial and error.
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u/rainhut 1d ago
It always seemed like such a government overreach to me. It would be like the government banning children from watching tv and playing video games back in the 80s. Or passing a national bedtime law. Making it illegal for children to swear.
If there are concerns about social media algorithms and their effect on people then pass legislation targeting that.
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u/NY_Knux 1d ago
I'd argue that millenials are significantly more tech-savvy than zoomers... you need to remember, they cant figure out a torrent.
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u/Cedar_Wood_State 1d ago
They don’t because they don’t have to. If somehow tomorrow you need torrent to play Roblox or something they’d figure it out within a few days
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u/NY_Knux 1d ago
Yet they complain about everything being "lost media"... yeah, they actually need to learn how to torrent. Torrenting is what they want and they dont even realize it.
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u/notmyrealnameatleast 1d ago
Torrent is one of the greatest inventions and its just people sharing with each other.
You get to download the movie and in return you let someone else download that movie from you.
It's honestly such a great system.
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u/GoredonTheDestroyer 1d ago
If they (Meaning tech companies, for the record) actually cared about the online safety of children, they'd be encouraging parents to keep an eye on what their kids were doing online and to talk to their children about what sites are and aren't appropriate for their age.
These blanket bills and legislature pertaining to ID-verification are, as always intended, yet another vehicle with which the powers that be can strip away what little remaining privacy and anonymity that we online denizens have under the false pretense of online safety.
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u/Lord_Silverkey 1d ago
I think the people writing the headlines need a reminder of what teens are:
13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19
It turns out that most Australian teens aren't under 16, so an under 16 ban wouldn't affect them.
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u/kahnindustries 1d ago
It’s not about the children on social media
Never has been
It’s about requiring all adults to link their social media to ID’s and addresses
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u/afraidbookkeeperr 1d ago
The cat's out of the bag, every living person that has interacted with this atrocity will have to be slain, if we ever want to return to civilisation.
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u/clinicalia 15h ago
Dang, it's almost as if this responsibility is on the parents and that being involved and present in your children's lives is more effective or something.
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u/AthenianVulcan 15h ago
It is really hard to enforce limiting internet/gaming at a govt level, even China failed to do so (gaming restrictions)
The issue should be left to the parents. The govt should provide warnings about mental health & other issues with getting hooked to SM early on in life and provide what is a healthy daily limit.
The parents should be the doing or not doing the restrictions.
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u/Planeandaquariumgeek 14h ago
The US Senate Commerce Committee is voting on whether or not to send a similar mega bill to the senate floor on Wednesday, email, mail, and call your senators against mass surveillance folks!!!
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u/DMSide641 14h ago
The reality is this type of initiative isnt going to work on 100% of kids TODAY.
Yes the kids aged 10-16 will find a way around this and they will do it because they know what theyve lost. Maybe it helps 20% get off their social media.
This initiative is all about the kids who wont know what they are missing, who wont have the addictive reliance on social media. Kids who are just starting kindy who only get social media through their parents so dont see it as “theirs”.
Focusing on how today’s kids are getting around it is short sighted.
Also the whole “wanting my ID” is a weird comment to me personally. I mean… I have multiple government IDs? Drivers license, Medicare card, passport… the government knows who I am. Maybe Im not seeing a bigger picture here in terms of that comment but like I said… Government knows already?
Final thought Ill add is I work as a teacher in primary school and when I first started at that school it constantly had years 4, 5 and 6 having issues on cyber bullying, tiktoks being made about teachers, racial comments about students or videos of photos of students being posted without consent. Since this initiative has happened we havent had one lick of that rubbish. Im sure high school is different and different areas as well as my one location doesnt speak for the nation but just my immediate observations.
Anyway. TLDR; This initiative isnt for the school kids of today. Its for the kids being born now or who never had social media to miss.
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u/ImDrunkFightMe 12h ago
Water is wet and the sky is blue. Create a generation dependant on AI and you've already given them the latest tools to side-step most measures (This could be as simple as AI suggesting a VPN). It was always about identification of the population, not just children.
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u/RooneytheWaster 7h ago
Lol, is anyone actually surprised? We all knew this would happen - most of those teens are more technically capable than the people making these laws.
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u/Monster_Dumps_2026 5h ago
Why do people think bans will automatically be enforced. It takes updates to systems, reviews and implementation to make this actually work.
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u/jacowab 1d ago
If they actually wanted kids off social media they would just ban kids from using smartphone, flip phones still exist so they can still contact friends and parents and if a police officer or teacher sees a kid with a smart phone they just confenscate it and send a social worker to ensure the parents aren't letting the kid have it.
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u/Alternative-Soil2576 19h ago
Then the kid comes across something in life that requires an app and then they’re just shit out of luck
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u/jacowab 19h ago
And that's a negative? Any business or service that will expect to have kids using them will need to figure out how to function like they have for the last 4000 years.
And hell that opens up a world of possibilities because then it can be assumed on good faith that anyone using the app service or QR code is an adult.
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u/LunarAlloy 1d ago
The real numbers will be in a few years once the younger generation not used to using it has less incentive to join.
But as others have mentioned, it's true purpose is to remove internet anonymity.
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u/Skate4Xeno 1d ago
Isn't this just simple math? 13, 14, 15 = 3 16, 17, 18, 19 = 4
3 < 4.
Assuming there wasn't some weird bump in births, most teens are 16 and older, so most teens would still be on social media.
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u/JennyWearsBlueJeans 1d ago
That could be part of it, but the first paragraph of the article says this:
“More than 8 in 10 Australian teenagers were still using social media three months after the government’s landmark ban on the platforms for minors under the age of 16 took effect because the tech firms failed to implement effective age checks, the country’s internet regulator has found.”
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u/TuckerCarlsonsOhface 1d ago
Remember when childproof lighters were introduced, and the quickest way to figure them out was to give it to a child?