"At 14 you can work, but you can't talk to your friends on Instagram."

Perth (Australia)Jessica, 14, admits her account still works because she said she was born in 2009: "I use it to talk to my friends, if I'm interested in something, to see what people are doing..." "And you send me recipes to cook!" adds her mother, Ruth Walker. Elsa, 14, even uses Snapchat for a work group: "At my age, you start high school, you can get a job, or you can end up in juvenile detention, but you can't talk to your friends on Instagram," she complains.

Since December 10, TikTok, Facebook, X –formerly Twitter–, Instagram, YouTube and Reddit, among others, have been required by law to expel minors under sixteen years of ageThe text of the Social Media Minimum Age Act 2024 The bill, passed last year, received parliamentary support from both the Labor government and the opposition. "We know it's not easy, nobody has done it before, but that's why it's so important," said a confident Anthony Albanese, the Australian Prime Minister.

However, in a survey of 17,000 teenagers conducted by the public broadcaster ABC, three out of four said they had no intention of giving up social media, and 70% said the law was not a good idea. "My accounts still work," Elsa points out. "I know some people's accounts don't work, but they've just opened new ones."

Anabelle, 15, is in a similar situation. "I don't think many teenagers my age comply," she says. She acknowledges that she could live without social media, but that it makes life easier: "Not everything about social media is bad," she adds, "but I do think it should be managed better." For Jessica, the minimum age for access "can be a good measure." But at the same time, she believes that "what teenagers can see should have been filtered instead of banning them."

Under the new law, companies must determine how they will identify users. They can do so with a government-issued ID, but this cannot be the sole form of verification. So far, Julie Inman Grant, head of eSafety, has confirmed that most companies have adopted a set of measures that include facial recognition—which is not 100% effective—and the collection of data on user behavior. These are systems already in place in the UK. They are used to restrict access to pornography websites to minors.

Grant vowed that he wouldn't be deterred by "isolated cases of teenage ingenuity" attempting to circumvent the ban, and therefore requested that the ten banned platforms submit reports for December 9th and 11th "on how this age restriction is being enforced, primarily to ensure it's working," he stated. In fact, some companies like TikTok have been alerting their users for weeks, and Meta invited them to enter their birthdate so they could be notified when they turned sixteen.

"We're talking about this now because we've had 30 years of free rein for platforms," argues Terry Flew, co-director of the Center for Artificial Intelligence, Trust and Governance, "which have failed in any social responsibility. And now they're developing versions for teenagers that try to cover up what they've done."

So far, all the companies have stated they will comply with the law. Reddit, for its part, has announced it will take the case to court, and two 15-year-olds, with the support of a Conservative MP from New South Wales, have taken the case to the Supreme Court, which will decide whether to hear it in early 2026.

For Flew, this new law responds to social anxiety, rather than to empirical evidence and expert consensus: "I would say there is strong support for the idea that the government should do something about the platforms and young people; now, what to do is the debate," he clarifies.

From campaign to law

The government of Anthony Albanese The law was passed in one week at the end of 2024 and was propelled by a media campaign by radio host Whippa and publicist Roba Galluzzo. Together they created 36 Months, a campaign focused on suicide, which soon after received the support of Rupert Murdoch's newspapers with the slogan "Let them be kids [Let them be children]. When Albanese was in New York for the 80th UN General Assembly with communications minister Anika Wells to present the law, Whippa was also there. For Michael Dezuanni, a digital media researcher at Queensland University of Technology, "this doesn't seem like the best way to legislate public policy."

Dezuanni believes Albanese is sincere when he says he's concerned about the impact on minors, but he points to cases like Roblox, an online gaming platform denounced by the Texas attorney general as a "breeding ground for pedophiles," which hasn't been banned. "There's plenty of evidence to suggest this legislation won't be positive because it doesn't require companies to do better," he concludes.

This isn't the first time Australia has clashed with internet giants. In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, the Morrison government forced Meta and Google to pay local media outlets for the use of their content. Now, the Albanian government has approved a pioneering measure whose effect will be difficult to see in the short term. "It would be better to think positively," says Marta Orue, Elsa's mother, "what are they offering them so they're not constantly scrolling through Instagram?"