Australia's social media ban for teens has failed, says study
What's the story
Australia's groundbreaking ban on social media for kids under 16 has largely failed, a recent study by the country's internet regulator, eSafety, revealed. The research found that over 80% of Australian teens are still using platforms like Instagram and TikTok three months after the ban was enforced. This is largely due to tech companies not implementing effective age verification checks.
Usage patterns
Parental awareness has decreased
The eSafety study also found that most kids aged 10-15 were using social media as much in March as they did before the ban came into effect on December 10 last year.
Interestingly, parental awareness of their children's social media use has decreased during this period.
This trend highlights the ongoing challenge of regulating and monitoring online behavior among young users.
Platform engagement
Platforms with biggest drop in usage
While account ownership has seen a decline from 52% to 42%, many kids are still using these platforms.
The biggest drop was recorded on YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok.
"Most under-16s who had social media accounts before commencement were able to either retain them or create new ones at the three-month mark," eSafety said in its statement about the findings of the study.
User retention
High level of user retention
Before the ban, nearly 86% of kids surveyed said they used at least one age-restricted platform. Three months later, that number was still over 81%, the report said.
About 58% of teens reported using social media daily or more often, only slightly down from about 60% before the ban came into effect.
This shows a high level of user retention despite regulatory efforts.
Regulatory challenges
Kids reveal how they bypassed age checks
Nearly half of the kids who still had social media accounts said platforms never asked them to verify their age.
Others said they had entered their age as 16 or older while creating their accounts, or that the platforms' age-check systems wrongly identified them as old enough to use the apps.
These findings highlight major loopholes in current age verification processes on social media platforms.