Fines Doubled As Teens Outsmart Australia's Social Media Ban
3 153Australia plans to double fines for social media platforms that fail to keep under-16s off restricted services, after regulators found 70% of children with accounts remained active three months after the ban took effect. The government says the changes will also give the eSafety Commissioner more power to demand information from platforms and age-assurance providers as teens continue finding ways around the law. Euronews reports: The government said Sunday it would introduce draft legislation this week doubling the maximum penalty to 99 million Australian dollars (63 million euros) for platforms -- including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok -- that do not take reasonable steps to comply with the ban, which became law on 10 December. Communications Minister Anika Wells blamed the platforms directly. "We can all agree we would like the scheme to work better than it is currently, but that is on Big Tech taking the Mickey," she said, speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Corp on Monday. Wells added that she had received monthly updates from the online safety regulator since March and "we are not seeing improvements."
The amendments would also expand the powers of eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant to demand information and documents from platforms -- and from third parties such as age assurance technology providers -- to test claims made by companies about how under-16s continued to circumvent the ban. The government had initially reported more than 5 million children had accounts removed, deactivated or restricted after the legislation passed. But eSafety found in March that 70% of children who held accounts on restricted platforms on the day the ban took effect remained active on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok.
Inman Grant said in April she was considering court action against those platforms and YouTube, alleging they were not taking reasonable steps to exclude children. She said she was satisfied with progress made by the remaining restricted platforms: X, Kick, Reddit, Threads and Twitch. Senior opposition lawmaker Jane Hume said her party would consider supporting the reforms, but pinned blame on the original legislation. "The legislation was clearly undercooked in the first place. The eSafety Commissioner wasn't given the powers to be able to pursue these Big Tech companies," she said.
3 comments
Re:Surely (Score: 5, Insightful)
by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Monday July 06, 2026 @11:37AM (#66225000)
Have you tried it?
Parenting in a world where kids face unlimited temptation to consume things that you believe are harmful to them paired with near instance access all over the damn place is pretty hard.
In ever previous era, with every previous vice society has agreed to put at least some barriers in front of children and to do so in a mostly if not perfect way. Most 8 year olds cannot simply go get a case a beer anytime they want, and if they do there is ample opportunity for parents to find out about. You know if your two young child is running with inappropriate people and you either do something or don't.
Same thing with other things like smoking, hazardous materials, etc. The book shop won't let your kid into the adults only section...
but here is the important but, you CAN still let your child take their bicycle and pocket money and go to the c-store, bookstore, etc and get some candy and comics/pokemon cards etc. They can go an interface with the world in a safe way.
Now try this online... At best you get parental controls on the platform, which may or may not reflect what YOU the parent feels is or is not fit for your child, but rather what someone at Meta decided was fine. Things like youtube-kids, ok but nothing stops them from just watching as a guest. Sure you can lock down their phone, but you have control over the library PC, their friend bobby's tablet, etc. Thanks to 'privacy and security' which we all know is really just about DRM you can't implement your own parental controls without entirely breaking the web and apps, and smart devices.
You are left with accepting mega corps get to put whatever they want in front of your kids eyes, infantalizing them entirely and/or never letting them touch anything electronic without your shoulder surfing.
The status quo is an should be treated as unacceptable. The privacy and expression concerns should be the problems to solve rather than reasons to toss our hands up. Anyone just saying 'parent harder' should should get busted in the teeth!
This just further isolates kids (Score: 5, Interesting)
by flink ( 18449 ) on Monday July 06, 2026 @11:33AM (#66224992)
My experience is the US, mind, not AU, so things are probably somewhat different there. But with that caveat in mind: At least on school days, the ONLY social interaction my 10 year old son gets with his peers is online through "social media". I've sent him outside to "bike around the neighborhood and find someone to play with" and he reported that there wasn't anyone. I walked around with him and sure enough, the streets were deserted @ 3:00 on a weekday afternoon. All the kids are kept inside or at some structured after school activity. If I want him to go to a friend's house that is not in walking distance my wife or I have to take time off to drive him there and pick him up. In my day you could just hop on your friend's bus and get off at his stop with him, but they don't allow that anymore (even with a not from the parents: I checked with the school).
Now that it is summer, everyone is in "camp", so again, no playmates if you don't also send your kid to "camp". I guess no one fucks around in each other's yard, plays pickup baseball, or goes fishing anymore. I've tried to raise my kids to have active independent childhoods, but without the network effect of other parents giving their kids the same freedoms, it just ain't happening.
So his friend group mostly coordinates through discord on their iPads to play minecraft and other online activities together as their main form of play. I understand that a lot of these social media platforms are not healthy for kids, but for many it is their ONLY outlet. To the extent social media gets regulated, it should be to curb predatory practices by the platform. That plus good parenting and supervision should be sufficient. But an outright ban is overkill.
This felony screams for hard punishment (Score: 5, Funny)
by yanestra ( 526590 ) on Monday July 06, 2026 @11:43AM (#66225014)
Hard and harsh punishment was always the solution - without it, Australia wouldn't even be populated.