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How Europe is gearing up to follow Australia's teen social media ban
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- Title
- The EU has voted in favour of a teen social media ban, but not like Australia's
- Published
- Dec 7 2025
- Word count
- 997 words
Is this implying that parents need their governments to pass laws to prevent their kids from doing something? Seems to me that if your parents don't consent, you already need to dodge their restrictions. What's stopping you from dodging further?
Last I checked every freaking forum had a "confirm you're at least 13 years old" checkbox already.
...
Why does it seem like all western democracies do is pass useless legislation to appease public opinion?
Actually no, more like passing legislation that appeases public opinion while at the same time putting more restrictions and justifications on surveillance on the internet.
I genuinely don’t know where I stand on these laws - I strongly dislike government control of the media landscape in principle, but I also recognise the enormous collective harm being done by these platforms, so it’s a bit of a catch 22.
What I will say, though, is that a sweeping ban is a way different thing to a parental consent requirement given that social networks rely on, well, network effects. Make it a parental consent question and you’re dividing teenagers into an in group and an out group - parents are pressured to agree because the harm of being a social outcast could well be worse than the harm of being on whatever platform, and teenagers themselves (many of whom are intelligent, introspective people quite capable of recognising the mental health concerns and addictive behaviours their phones are bringing) face exactly that same lose-lose choice. If the network effect is disrupted by a ban (and yes, that’s a big “if”), it changes that dynamic dramatically.
I don’t like government bans, at all. I particularly don’t like them when they’re so laughably easily circumvented, and when their enforcement tends to stray into areas of technically absurd invasiveness. But I’m at least willing to watch this one with an open mind and see if it acts more as a government enforced escape hatch from networks that most people probably shouldn’t be part of in the first place, rather than as a ban to work around on something they’re going to do anyway.
People speak of ban vs. no ban, but I think the primary problem is one of design: online spaces currently allow children to have excessive space and time out of sight of the 'village': parents, relatives, family friends, trusted community members who can see and correct misbehavior. Instead, we effectively let moderation tools parent children online.
This is such an important point. One of the scariest moments for me as a parent was when I heard about a colleague whose child had a secret snapchat account in defiance of their parents social media ban. But I have no doubt that is a result of that social pressure.
It's kind of a lowest common denominator thing - parents in a community don't act as a group, they act as individuals, but the choices of a few parents to allow social media use at a young age creates that social pressure for everyone. This is where a ban would give those parents when are trying to keep social media out of their kids lives standing to push back against the other parents.
A ban might also create legal recourse against the social media companies for underage account creation, which would require the social media companies to better police their own verification processes, something they won't do on their own because, as you say, they rely on growth and network effects.
I think it's reasonable for parents to expect some cooperation from the community. For example, it would probably be harder to keep kids from smoking if any store will sell them cigarettes.
They might get cigarettes anyway, but that doesn't mean it has to be easy.
The ten apps getting banned for under-16's in Australia are:
Huh.
4Chan or TruthSocial are OK?
I imagine they're going after the largest, most visible networks. Not necessarily the "worst," which is technically subjective. Otherwise, they should also be going after places like Kiwi Farms. But again, that's subjective.
As bad as 4chan is, I imagine it doesn't hold a candle to any of those ten social media properties in terms of size and DAUs and such. Not necessarily relevant, but is 4chan "social media" as think of it? Though I guess if one questions 4Chan, then reddit could also be questionable. Though reddit inc. has definitely been social-mediafying reddit.com.
And Truth Social...do kids really hang out there? Does anyone actually hang out there?
Well, if the bans work at all, the kids will go to the next site...
I'm generally for regulation (if the alternative is the "free market") but I can't imagine[0] this path is a path that will serve society at large including kids & their guardians.
[0] As in I can't actually make up a scenario, using my current knowledge of the world, that will be beneficial in the way people are presenting these kinds of laws.
The ban specifically exempts some platforms (notably Discord, among others), which I think is sensible in trying to mitigate that issue a bit - they're guiding people towards a more specific subset of platforms, rather than just saying "no online communication for you" and pulling a surprised Pikachu face when everyone ends up somewhere even worse via a VPN.
Will it work? I'm not sure, I've already expressed some concerns about that further up. But it looks like they're at least attempting to guide people towards the smaller, more human platforms for actual group conversation and away from the churning infinite feeds of advertising and propaganda.
To add to that, don't all the banned platforms have their own official mobile apps? I don't think 4chan does, just third party apps according to a quick search. And most kids do seem to prefer apps over websites...
(Granted, pretty sure Truth Social also has an app, but like you said, I don't think many kids would hang out there. Especially Australian kids. If one goes out of their way to sign up they're already deep into the mire...)
Looking forward to seeing how this is implemented. NZ tends to let big brother Aussie try things first and then copy them if they work out fine.
They're just going to keep moving to different apps or find other ways around the ban every time something changes, IMO
To be fair, if this kicks everyone back into IRC-style independent chats rather than giant algorithmically driven advertising engines I’d consider that an absolute win!
I don’t think that can really happen - the internet is too big and the incentives to infiltrate any and all platforms with bots are too high nowadays - but even a bit of fragmentation might not be a bad thing.
I don't think it's meant to be an overall solution. If they move to discord, that's fine, that's not full of algorithmic poison. A lot of these kids aren't that tech savvy, they might not know how to get around it.
Like, if you're really intent in getting around it, you will. But you might be surprised on what simple roadblocks can do. Like, emulation is trivial, but I still see people excited about basic ports, even though it'd take them 30 secs to set up the game if they wanted to. Or how I still see so many people with ads in their browser, even though getting ublock origin is literally 2 or 3 clicks.
A simple roadblock can filter out a ton of people.
They don't necessarily need to be tech savvy to get around it. Kids/teenagers can and will figure out their ways to socialise online even if you try to forbid them to - this has been shown previously in various articles on tildes. They don't need to know about VPNs or proxies; all they may need is simply to self-organise and migrate elsewhere.
Ban their favourite app and they'll move to another; ban all messaging apps and they'll self organise their own bootleg social media in a place not intended to be social media - and all it takes is someone taking an initiative. And the irony is that there'll be even less "control" there.
I think that's perfectly fine. Like I said, if kicking them off Reddit gets them into Discord, that's fine. It's not ideal, ideally they go outside and socialise. But Discord doesn't have the algorithmic poison that FB, TikTok and Instagram have. If they self organise and make their own bootleg forum, the government considers that a win.
Ultimately, this will resolve around metrics. If literacy goes up and suicides go down, this will be successful and we in NZ will replicate it. If it makes it worse, it'll be repealed and we'll try something else.
Maybe we'll see a renaissance of tech skills amongst Gen Alphas. I remember how many of us Millennials tried to get around the web filters at school or at the library.
On one hand, I think it is a good thing that politicians are finally realizing the harms of these algorithmically controlled media platforms. We already have strict regulations and age restrictions on online gambling, for similar reasons of being highly addictive. Just not sure an age restriction is the right way, or even enough. I mean, these platforms are harmful and addictive for adults too. Just putting an age label on it doesn't solve much. I think we should consider actual requirements for these platforms, mitigating and regulating their addictiveness. Like force the option of a linear non-algorithmic feed, more transparency and user control over which content you get recommended, high fines for allowing outright scam advertising and so forth. But of course, their only contribution is the "easy" one of a dumb age restriction.
I have really mixed feelings about this trend.
I had very few friends in my teen years and only found refuge in online communities. On the other hand I'm hardly a model for good mental health so lol
So this is where I struggle on these issues. On the one hand, I think there is a lot of harm that comes out of social media - constant, pervasive bullying, FOMO, sexting/sextortion and recently AI enabled fake nudes using real people, child predators, and probably a lot more I'm not aware of or can't conceive of myself.
But on the other hand, people like yourself find communities and groups to feel included in, feel not so alone, or feel like they have people that do understand them.
So which takes precedence? I think the human reaction is to focus on the negative and not the positive. Maybe that's because we avoid negative consequences so it's easier to "quantify" those and ban things than it is to see the positive outcomes as those are mostly below the surface or harder to see.
In your instance, are you better off (even with your self described mental state) having had that space online or would you be in a much worse space today without them? (This is a question I ask knowing nothing about you and please don't take it the wrong way.)
At the end of the day I think that the only thing that helps kids is trusted adults teaching them how to navigate our society, how to build resilience against the negatives of these platforms, and managing access based on the needs/maturity of any given child. Blanket banning things from the top feels like the wrong approach to me, but I can understand the desire for people to feel like they're doing something.
I think seeking refuge online is a bandaid , not a solution. I spent a ton of time online growing up, made hundreds of "friends", and in the end, I learned that none of those relationships are truly real. They're just words on a screen, and they can very easily just vanish without a trace one day. I have friends that I made online who I've met and still regularly visit, but those are no longer "online friends". They're just my friends.
I think long term, it would have been better and healthier for me to make more friends in real life, find communities around me that were supportive and welcoming, and develop real social skills instead of internet chatting skills, but that wasn't an option for me a lot of the time.
That's just covering the positive aspects of online communities too, there was also a lot of harassment, bullying, cynicism, sexualization and so on that I really shouldn't have been exposed to at that age.
All of this was also before the internet became a huge for-profit attention stealing competition. I think overall, people are happier without social media, and restricting kids from it makes sense.
That said, I do really worry about the privacy implications of actually implementing anything like this.
It's worth noting that the banned platforms seem to be those centered around alogirthmic content creation. Discord isn't getting banned, so platforms meant for actual direct socializing rather than media seem to be safe overall. Tumblr also seems safe, possibly since it doesn't use an algorithm to flood feeds the way other platforms do.
Honestly my biggest concern about the headline was cutting off kids from support networks. There was a young Australian teen on a Discord server I run dealing with some messed up stuff at home, and Discord was one of the only places they could seek advice and support. Thankfully things seem much better now, but that was my first thought. Just having people to talk to and validate your feelings is HUGE, and can be the literal difference between life and death for some people.
I'm going to say it: an incalculable number of young people will kill themselves over this.
Many, many people are only alive today because they were able to, though the internet, find information and people like them. Whether that's LGBT teens having the tools to find out why they're different and navigate that, or nerds finding like-minded people while they're trapped in a desert of fools.
And this is precisely what this growing global movement is about at its core: social conservatives desperately trying to stop the youth from becoming "woke," by isolating them. And implementing de-anonymization of the internet for censorship and control for everyone.