In a world first, Australia will introduce a law that will ban access to social media for children under the age of 16 years – with no exceptions whatsoever. The anti-social media legislation is backed by Australian PM Anthony Albanese and his government, with various reports calling this decision the strongest such measure proposed by any country till now to prevent access to social media websites like Instagram, Facebook, X.com (formerly Twitter), TikTok, among others, by minors.
According to Reuters, earlier today at a press conference PM Albanese emphasised, “Social media is doing harm to our kids and I’m calling time on it.” This law is part of a multipronged attack on social media, where Australia is trying out age-filtering and verification systems to block children from viewing social media platforms.
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Without mincing any words, Albanese was crystal clear in his remarks aimed at social media platforms. “The onus will be on social media platforms to demonstrate they are taking reasonable steps to prevent access, the onus won’t be on parents or young people,” said the Australian PM, according to Reuters. The move enjoys bipartisan support in the country, with the leading opposition party in Australia expressing support for the age-restricted social media ban for the benefit of children.
During his press conference signalling the decisive move, Australian PM Albanese spoke about the potentially damaging effects of social media on children’s physical and mental health, with increased risk of harmful portrayal of body image issues among girls and spread of anti-women content targeting young boys. Growing cases of cyberbullying and exposure to inappropriate content is also one of the chief reasons behind Australia’s move to restrict social media for childrens with a strong legal framework.
Australia’s being lauded for not being the world’s first country to discover the dark side of social media but actually doing something about it once and for all, in a way that makes social media platforms think long and hard about their own accountability going forward. The world has known about social media’s pitfalls, especially for younger audiences, for some time now.
Back in 2021, the Wall Street Journal reported a bombshell based on a slide from an internal presentation at Facebook (now Meta). Based on Facebook’s internal research at the time, Instagram knew that it was having a harmful impact on teenage girls, particularly related to body image issues. According to the research, Instagram had been quietly observing the impact of its social platform on the lives of teenage girls since at least 2019.
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As many as “one in three teenage girls” were worse off due to unhealthy and unrealistic portrayal of female body stereotypes on Instagram, mentioned in a slide in the Facebook presentation accessed by the WSJ report. Another presentation from March 2020 said Instagram made young teenage girls “feel worse” when they were already suffering from social media-based body anxiety issues. In its defence, Facebook in 2021 put out a detailed blog post on the Instagram research into teenage well-being while calling WSJ’s report a “mischaracterization”.
In fact, in May 2023, responding to a question if social media use is safe for kids, “The answer is that we don’t have enough evidence to say it’s safe, and in fact, there is growing evidence that social media use is associated with harm to young people’s mental health,” said U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy in a US Department of Health and Human Services bulletin. It further noted that social media use by young people is nearly universal, with up to 95% of young people aged 13-17 reporting using a social media platform and more than a third saying they use social media “almost constantly.”
According to a September 2023 article in The 19th, exposure to videos and photos on social media platforms can contribute to body dissatisfaction and eating disorders among teen and adolescent girls. Experts warn that these negative impacts can escalate into severe mental health issues, including suicidal behaviour. In a Harvard report, Amanda Raffoul, an instructor at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a researcher with STRIPED (Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders), observed that even if teens might be aware that the images aren’t real, “if you’re constantly bombarded with those images, it is going to alter your perceptions of yourself in some way, especially when you’re in adolescence,” she added. All of this is ultimately detrimental towards teens’ mental and physical health.
Just as there’s no lack of research and evidence about the harmful effects of social media on children and teens around the world, several countries have tried to enact measures to protect their young citizens from social media’s growing menace.
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In June 2023, France mandated that social media platforms verify users’ ages and obtain parental consent for those under 15. According to an MIT report, China, in August 2023, introduced comprehensive restrictions on app usage for minors, including a three-hour weekly gaming limit and age-appropriate content curation on platforms like TikTok.
The UK has taken steps to protect children online with its Age Appropriate Design Code, or Children’s Code, which came into effect in September 2021 – which prioritises child safety by requiring online services to implement high privacy settings and minimise data collection, according to a Techcrunch report. Most recently, Norway announced in October 2024 plans to raise the minimum age for social media access from 13 to 15, aiming to shield children from harmful content and online algorithmic influence.
Among all these countries, the Australian government’s announcement to introduce a law that outright bans children from using social media in a way that holds the online platforms accountable for ensuring the law’s efficacy is the most stringent measure yet to curtail the power of social media giants.
You’d be surprised to know that India already has a few legal guidelines to protect children from harmful effects of social media, starting with the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDPA) 2023.
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Broadly, the act gives a few provisions for social media platforms with respect to handling user data of minors or children. The act mandates social media companies to obtain parental consent prior to processing of personal data of anyone under the age of 18. In such cases, data processing should always prioritise the child’s well-being – without any sort of tracking, monitoring or targeted advertising directed at them.
In 2023, LiveLaw reported the Karnataka High Court’s suggestion of implementing an age limit of 21 for accessing social media, citing concerns about excessive social media addiction among schoolchildren and its overall negative impacts on younger audiences.
However, according to a TOI report of September 2023, as many as six out of 10 young children between the age of 9-17 years spend over three hours daily on various social media or gaming websites, based on a national study of close to 50,000 Indian parents. In Maharashtra, 17% of parents responded saying their children were online for over six hours every single day!
As a parent of a young child, clearly I feel there’s a responsibility on parents to step in and restrict their ward’s online time. But I also want to cut my fellow Indian parents some slack, and question the role played by social media companies in safeguarding children online, where excessive screen time is linked to physical issues like headaches and back pain, as well as mental health concerns such as anxiety.
With Australia’s bold move to protect its young citizens from online harms still a year away from taking effect, with key questions on its effective implementation still unanswered, it’s clear India needs to follow down a similar path and do more to safeguard its children online. As the digital landscape rapidly evolves, there is a growing imperative for Indian policymakers to strengthen protections for young internet users. The decision to act (or not) can go a long way in shaping the next Indian digital generation.
