Australia will ban social media for children under 16 – yeah, nah!

Australia will ban social media for children under 16 with legislation coming to Parliament this year and enacted 12 months later.

PM Albanese said, “Social media is harming our kids, and I’m calling time on it.” Well, the truth is that the massive groundswell of opposition by parents given a voice via the media has forced Labor to act, announcing what amounts to hope rather than substance.

What we are announcing here and what we will legislate will be truly world-leading, Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said.

Come on, Minister—throw us a bone with a few details, please. Or is a vague nod as good a wink to a blind horse in the 2025 pre-election period? We don’t want a horary old drag-it-out-before-every-election to promise like the Newcastle/Sydney fast rail.

Here is what we think we know – but that will likely change

• Australia is trialling an age verification system. We don’t know if that uses facial recognition (which will fail as it would require a national database of everyone’s image) or an Age Estimation Tool (which is so inaccurate that it is useless). Android users can use the How old do I look app to see that this won’t work.

Reality: The government is using this rationale to issue everyone a unique biometric Australian Card number.

• No exemption for parental consent and no exemption for pre-existing accounts.

Reality: Kids may pretend to remove the app (rename it to something like a calculator), but anyone with a social media account will not remove it. In any case, things like geofencing Australia’s internet to prevent access to social media are too easily overcome by a VPN.

Albanese says that parents will now have the legislation to ensure compliance without them being the ‘bad guys’. Since when did a law stop people from breaking it?

This needs to be a generational response

As we wrote, Banning social media for children under 16. 100% right, but will it work? as parents, we have the right, responsibility, and power to guide our children’s social media use. It is not about banning but setting boundaries to protect them from potential harm.

We must take the time to ‘parent’—communicate the dangers and provide more parental interaction instead of more harmful screen time’—two excellent articles.

• Screen time drug addiction – children, teens, and everyone else at risk
• Screen Time for Kids – hyper-connection is harming our children

There are many ways to achieve the right result

CyberShack spoke to Charlie Brown, founder of g-mee, the children’s ‘non-phone’, which helps parents manage this issue. Charlie has teenage children and self-funded the creation of g-mee. He is well-known for his weekly Life and Technology national radio program since 2006 and  CyberShack TV. Disclaimer: he owns CBN Media. This is paraphrased.

Legislation is a good start, and there is a lot to consider. But the best part is that parents can now say it is against the law at your age. It also allows schools to let parents know if their children are seen using it.

Right now, we have total confusion;

• Social media app terms and conditions say one age.
• App stores saying another age.
• Children development experts say a different age.
• And Parents trying to navigate a constantly evolving landscape, which many are ill-equipped to manage.

This law should change all that.  ‘You are not 16. You can’t use that app, mate’

A parent’s job is now supported by a higher power than the kid’s argument that ‘all their friends are on this app, it’s fine’.

Let’s look beyond the law at how we can support parents right now. They need:

• Affordable and controllable devices to help their kids do the right thing – not Apple iPhones.
• Customisable parental controls that let them determine how far this ban should go.
• Local Australian support from the device and app creator who understands the legal and social landscape so they can ask for help and get an answer.

You can have that support right now – the law will take too long

About five years ago, way before any Prime Minister knew social media was a problem for kids, my wife and I developed the first g-mee ‘kid-safe’ non-phone. Mate, it was a phone without a phone or a camera, so kids can’t abuse it. It focused on 6-14-year-olds and removed the things they should not use.

Parents loved it, so we began expanding our device catalogue with a Smartphone and a Smart Player that helped parents control content and screen access time. We started selling devices all over the world. Most importantly, we made sure we listened to the tsunami of feedback and requests for features.

Families in the UK, USA, EU, Middle East, New Zealand, and Australia use our g-mee Connect Pro and Play Pro phones and non-phones to deliver safer digital content for kids.

We listened as parents wanted more to protect vulnerable kids

Parents wanted more than the Parental Control basics; they wanted much more. So, we tried to throw in the proverbial kitchen sink. We call it G-mee Co-Pilot (not to be confused with Microsoft Copilot), and it’s free to all G-mee Play Pro and Connect Pro users.

• Call blocking (Connect)
• SMS blocking (Connect)
• Video blocking
• App Limits
• Internet access
• Location tracking
• Blue light manager
• Remote Pin reset
• Remote real-time use from a parent’s iOS or Android phone)
• Spotify video player blocking

These are all part of the g-mee co-pilot system and cannot be circumvented.

Bottom line: This technology enables parents to set boundaries, know what apps are on their kid’s devices, and modify access to illegal ones under this potential law.

CyberShack’s view – Australia will ban social media for children under 16, and the little darlings will find a way around that.

Charlie is right—it is all about parenting. As a parent, he looked for a better way, mortgaged the kids’ house, and spent countless hours making a solution that works for most parents.

Whatever proposed legislation is delivered, it will have so many holes and be influenced by so many vested-interest third parties that, at best, we will have a leaky compromise. The Government should be strong and ‘just do it’.

“If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want. All that is left is compromise.”

ban social media, ban social media

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