The Molly Rose Foundation polled 1 050 Australian youngsters aged between 12 and 15, and found that most are still accessing social media platforms they shouldn’t be able to.
The online safety advocacy group, based in the UK, found that 61 percent of Australian youngsters who had accounts on what are now restricted platforms, still have access to those accounts. Of the thousand or so youngsters polled, 53 percent said they still had access to TikTok, 53 percent said they could still access YouTube, and 52 percent said they could still access Instagram.
The Australian government’s ban of social media access for children under 16, hasn’t been all that effective by the looks of things.
Indeed, Andy Burrows, chief executive of the Molly Rose Foundation says that the results of the survey raise serious questions about the effectiveness of the Australian social media ban.
“Proponents of a ban argue that it offers an immediate and decisive firebreak, but the early evidence from Australia shows it only lets tech firms off the hook and fails to give children the step change in online safety and wellbeing they need,” says Burrows.
While some of these youngsters are likely to be using workarounds, such as a VPN or setting up new accounts, the Molly Rose Foundation alleges that platforms have failed to identify and remove accounts from users who are below 16 years old.
And the Foundation found that the reason the ban was put into effect – to guard the safety and mental well-being of young people in their formative years – wasn’t effective at doing that at all. The survey revealed that 42 percent of young people said the ban had no impact on their lives while 32 percent said the impact was negative. Only 22 percent of young people said it was positive. It seems then that very few Aussie kids took Anthony Albanese’s advice to start a new sport or learn an instrument.
The ban is also sure to push children to platforms that don’t really care for what the Australian government has to say. There is a long list of platforms that children can’t access but the list doesn’t include the multitude of other platforms that are far worse than the likes of Instagram and X.
This is important information what with South African lawmakers considering a similar ban of social media for children. For now, the powers that be are considering increasing regulations for video sharing platforms (which is quite frankly every platform these days) including that they establish age verification measures.
As we’re seeing though, platforms aren’t all that effective at determining if a user is of age and asking folks to upload age verification can get messy quickly. And even if they get better, young people are rather smart at getting around these measures.
As a model for other countries then, Australia’s social media ban leaves much to be desired.
Let’s talk tech!
Get the tech news you want to read. Take our reader survey and tell us how we can help you better.
