SYDNEY: Shortly after Australia’s world-first ban on social media for those under the age of 16 came into effect on Dec 10, 2025, 15-year-old Ramsay Daglish found himself locked out of his preferred app, YouTube. But he was not locked out for long.
Ramsay, who lives in Melbourne, simply changed the birthdate on his profile to claim that he was 19 years old – and he was surprised to see that YouTube readily accepted the change.
“It was really simple,” he told The Straits Times. “I don’t think I even had to use a password. It took me about a minute to figure out how to get around it.”
Ramsay said he supported the ban because “there is bad stuff happening online and kids are being targeted”. But he said: “The enforcement is a bit of a joke... It is probably not affecting many people around my age.”
Ramsay’s experience reflects a growing body of evidence that the ban – five months on – has had little impact on the social media usage of young Australians.
Despite the hopes of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese that the ban would “change lives for Australian kids” and help to curb harms such as bullying, grooming and sexual extortion, many younger Australians say that their social media usage has hardly changed.
Research has shown that many young social media users have either not been asked to verify their age or have found it easy to circumvent the ban by providing false information, asking older people, such as siblings, to enable access, or using virtual private networks to make it appear they are signing on from another country.
A survey of 1,027 Australians aged 10 and older published on May 18 by researchers from three Australian universities found 61 per cent of young Australians said they had not been affected by the ban. Only 26 per cent said they were significantly affected, while the remainder were moderately affected.
Some of those who endorsed the new rules found that they were not effective.
One of them was Addison Grant, a 14-year-old in Perth who supported the ban even though it covered Snapchat, her preferred social media app.
She opened the Snapchat app as the ban was about to come into effect and was asked for verification.
Then aged 13, she decided to try her luck, noting that her parents had said she could use the app until she was locked out. She opted to provide a selfie and held the phone to her face, tying her hair back as she tilted the phone at different angles. Finally, the app uploaded the image of her for about 30 seconds and said it had verified that she was over the age of 16 and allowed her to continue using it.
“I am still doing everything I could do before the ban,” she told ST.
Experts say these experiences have exposed the shortcomings of age verification processes and the need for platforms to be more proactive in keeping children safe.
Switching to social media apps not covered by ban
But Addison said the ban had not been entirely ineffective. She said some of her friends had been banned from Snapchat, which has resulted in her social groups shifting onto WhatsApp, which is not covered by the ban.
The 10 targeted platforms are Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, TikTok, Threads, Twitch, X and YouTube.
Addison said she had reduced her Snapchat usage from 20 to 30 minutes a day before the ban to about 30 minutes a week.
But she now spends about 45 minutes a day on WhatsApp. She also uses YouTube, which she said did not ban her account but restricted her access to features such as liking videos and subscribing to channels – a change which she said did not affect her use of the app.
Addison said she had mixed feelings about having avoided the ban.
“I was happy because I could keep connecting with my friends, and my cousins in Tasmania and Western Australia,” she said.
Noting that she has now become a regular user of Snapchat’s Streak, which counts daily contact between friends and relies on constant exchanges to keep the streak going, she said: “But now I have to keep texting every day. It is sucking me back into Snapchat to get what I need.”
Do age verification methods work?
The platforms covered by the ban have used various methods to verify ages, including allowing users to upload official documents such as passports, asking for in-app selfies or videos of the user, or using algorithms to estimate ages.
A report by the government’s eSafety Commissioner in March found that the social media platforms covered by the ban had taken “some steps” to comply with it. But while 4.7 million accounts had been removed or restricted by mid-December 2025 and a further 310,000 accounts prevented from accessing platforms between mid-December and early March 2026, the report said “a substantial number of children aged under 16 retain accounts”.
It said many young people had not been asked to verify their age and that platforms had sometimes allowed those who declared themselves under 16 to try to verify their age or allowed users to make multiple attempts at verification until they succeeded.
The eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, said in a statement that the government planned to further investigate non-compliance, warning that platforms that do not introduce appropriate systems to comply with the ban face fines of up to A$49.5 million (S$45.2 million).
“We have notified the platforms about specific issues and expectations for improvement, and warned them we are currently investigating potential non-compliance,” she said.
Countries around the world have moved to follow Australia’s ban, including Indonesia, France and Denmark.
Singapore’s Minister for Health Ong Ye Kung said in April that social media poses potential risks to adolescents through features such as algorithmic feeds and direct messaging by adults to young users. He said Singapore could try to address these concerns rather than impose an outright ban, noting that the Ministry of Digital Development and Information was discussing the concerns with tech platforms.
Professor Lisa Given, director of the Centre for Human-AI Information Environments at RMIT University in Melbourne, told ST that the ban was largely failing to prevent access to social media for younger people, owing to the technical challenges of age verification.
She said the government should consider boosting enforcement and potentially imposing fines. But she said the government should also consider introducing proposed “digital duty-of-care” laws, similar to those in the European Union, which require platforms to actively prevent harms through measures such as making it easier for users to report problems and having timelines for the removal of harmful content.
She said her message for countries introducing the ban would be to understand the limitations.
“My main message would be to do your homework,” she said. “Look at the data, and the compliance concerns, and start to understand the limits of what is possible technically.”
She added: “Other countries may see the headlines from Australia about the ban but are not following up with the reality that a significant number of children are still on platforms or have moved on to other platforms.”
The eSafety Commissioner’s report said a “holistic” approach was needed, including implementing laws that require the technology industry to protect Australians, especially children, from harmful online material.
Cyberbullying decreases
Addison said she believed the switch that many users have made to WhatsApp had helped to reduce cyberbullying or predatory behaviour towards young people because users can communicate on the app only if they have each other’s phone numbers.
“I have seen it (cyberbullying) happen on Snapchat – lots of hate messages, postings on stories, videos of fights, (people saying) ‘go kill yourself’,” she said.
“I haven’t seen that happening on WhatsApp.”
Prof Given said countries should work together to introduce duty-of-care laws and other measures to control social media usage, saying that “combining forces” would help to counter the strength of the global tech giants.
“The challenges with the social media ban are not a surprise in any way,” she said. “Age verification is not a quick fix. It will never be 100 per cent effective. These are the significant challenges that occur when you are trying to take policy into practice.” - The Straits Times/ANN
