Most Australian Teens Still On Social Media Three Months After Ban (reuters.com) 97
More than 81% of Australian children ages 10 to 15 were still using social media three months after the country's under-16 ban took effect, with roughly half saying platforms never checked their age. Reuters reports: In a study published on Friday, eSafety also found most children aged between 10 and 15 were using social media just as frequently in March as they had before the ban came into force on December 10 last year, while parental awareness of their habits decreased. Children's continued social media use took place even as account ownership declined to 42% from 52%, with "statistically significant" reductions across YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok in particular, the report said.
"Most under-16s who had social media accounts before commencement were able to either retain them or create new ones at the three-month mark, with social media platforms' failure to implement effective age assurance measures cited as the main reason," eSafety said in a statement [...] Before the ban, nearly 86% of children surveyed reported using at least one age-restricted platform. Three months later, that figure remained above 81%, the report said. About 58% of teenagers reported using social media daily or more often, barely down from roughly 60% before the ban, it found. The report showed minimal change in "sports and physical activity, arts and music, spending time with friends and family, and attendance at community events."
Around half the children who retained their accounts said platforms had not checked their age, the most common reason they were able to stay on the services. Others said their accounts listed them as aged 16 or older or that age-checking systems had incorrectly determined they were older. The findings broadly matched snapshot data eSafety published in late March.
"Most under-16s who had social media accounts before commencement were able to either retain them or create new ones at the three-month mark, with social media platforms' failure to implement effective age assurance measures cited as the main reason," eSafety said in a statement [...] Before the ban, nearly 86% of children surveyed reported using at least one age-restricted platform. Three months later, that figure remained above 81%, the report said. About 58% of teenagers reported using social media daily or more often, barely down from roughly 60% before the ban, it found. The report showed minimal change in "sports and physical activity, arts and music, spending time with friends and family, and attendance at community events."
Around half the children who retained their accounts said platforms had not checked their age, the most common reason they were able to stay on the services. Others said their accounts listed them as aged 16 or older or that age-checking systems had incorrectly determined they were older. The findings broadly matched snapshot data eSafety published in late March.
Re:What's going on in Australia? (Score:5, Interesting)
What has free speech got to do with minors using a product or service?
What next, you think kids should smoke because of free speech?
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No it's not. Your right to free speech is not impinged by preventing Facebook from offering you a service. At no point are you being censored or persecuted for what you say.
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That is rather an American point of view.
The US constitution only protects citizen's rights in dealings the government. In most other countries, human rights are also protected when dealing with businesses and citizens.
If children are barred from speaking, how is this not a freedom of speech matter? You have to be able to speak first before government can punish you for it!
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More accurate to say the bill of rights prohibits the government ( largely ) from certain actions.
Taking this a step further, who enforces "human rights" in dealing with businesses and citizens, if not the government? Who's to say that's a good thing anyway. Why can't I restrict access to me and mine from someone saying things I don't agree with? That's if you believe your "human rights" are equally and fairly applied, of course, which we all know they aren't.
No, the only sane approach to something like f
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Okay.... if we're going about this be country, this whole thing might take a while (I would foresee about ten pages at like 6 point font).
Does anyone really want 8 year-old little daughter "Jenny" watching teens twerk on a stripper pole so she has some future skills, or learn that anorexia/bulimia can make then skinnier and hotter?
Does anyone really want 8 year-old little son "Tommy" learning he can sneakily get upskirt pics of girls in class or that some women like getting their a$$ grabbed in public, so i
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If the justification for a new law is "it's for the children", then the law is junk and the politicians behind it are trying to con you with something.
Every single time.
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That is rather an American point of view.
No it's not. It's the global point of view. It's the legal point of view in Australia as well, and the legal point of view of the UNHCR as well. No one is being persecuted for speech and no free speech is being impinged by you not being allowed to use a specific private platform.
Yes, actually (Score:1)
Teenagers still experiment with cigarettes, light drugs and start drinking somewhere around the age of 15 like they should and politicians can
Re: Yeah (Score:5, Informative)
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Given the state of web searches these days, that actually argues that it's true.
Re:Yeah (Score:4, Informative)
No you can't. While there's no absolute right to free speech in Australia, there is an absolute right to protecting speech related to any religion. And precisely zero people have been imprisoned for "criticizing Islam". Please leave bullshit for the cows.
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"You can be imprisoned in Australia for criticizing Islam" - hah! Given a prominent ultra right wing Senator regularly criticizes Islam, I'd say you just made that up
Re: Yeah (Score:2)
While I agree that the original comment was made with no evidence citation and is likely bullshit, there's certainly plenty of precedent across the national and political spectrum for politicians doing the exact things that they've advocated imprisoning others for.
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Advocating and actually making good on it by passing laws are not the same thing. Mindless rhetoric does not make something a law. Yes Australia is full of politicians who are not just hypocritical arseholes, but would actively seek to implement laws to ban people from doing what they themselves have done in the past. But that doesn't change the fact that it's simply not illegal.
Re:Yeah (Score:5, Interesting)
They really should start holding parents accountable for buying age inappropriate things for their kids. Here in FL, the public schools in Orange County recently just instituted a ban on e-bikes and e-scooters, because a significant number of kids were flouting the traffic laws, riding without helmets, and some parents were actually buying e-motorcycles for their brats. I thought giving your kid a phone with unrestricted internet access was irresponsible enough, but someone's always gotta come along and say "Hold my beer!"
On one side you've got parents flipping out because the school library might have a book buried somewhere within the shelves that says trans people exist. On the other, there's parents buying their kids smartphones with unrestricted internet access, and frickin' motorcycles. The duality of parents is a strange, strange thing.
Re:Yeah (Score:4, Informative)
Here in Queensland where I live in Australia we've the same thing with e-bikes and kids, the showing off without a helmet, injuries & death etc,
We've new laws that aim to reduce the carnage (ask any hospital emergency department professional) and limit e-bike and e-scooter speed to 25 km/hr (divide by 1.6 for mph) or 12 km/h on footpaths.
This one may be of interest :-
"E-scooter, e-skateboard and e-unicycle riders must be aged 16 years or older to ride unsupervised. Children aged 12-15 can ride only under adult supervision.
Parents will be fined for under 16s riding illegally."
No one expects that there will be 100% adherence but it makes a line in the sand & I've not heard any negatives now it's in place.
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On one side you've got parents flipping out because the school library might have a book buried somewhere within the shelves that says trans people exist. On the other, there's parents buying their kids smartphones with unrestricted internet access, and frickin' motorcycles. The duality of parents is a strange, strange thing.
This is nothing to do with parenting, it's simple Narcissism 101. People want everything in the universe to operate on their terms. Hence: "Buying a motorcycle for my 6yo" is fine because *I* did it. "Finding that someone else put a book in the library that I think I would disapprove of if I visited libraries, or could read" is completely different because someone else did it. And I'm not even joking when I say all this, though I use hyperbolic language.
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They really should start holding parents accountable for buying age inappropriate things for their kids. Here in FL, the public schools in Orange County recently just instituted a ban on e-bikes and e-scooters, because a significant number of kids were flouting the traffic laws, riding without helmets, and some parents were actually buying e-motorcycles for their brats. I thought giving your kid a phone with unrestricted internet access was irresponsible enough, but someone's always gotta come along and say "Hold my beer!"
On one side you've got parents flipping out because the school library might have a book buried somewhere within the shelves that says trans people exist. On the other, there's parents buying their kids smartphones with unrestricted internet access, and frickin' motorcycles. The duality of parents is a strange, strange thing.
A lot of it is simple - every parent thinks that their kid is *special*, and the rules don't need to apply to them. The parents themselves see themselves as *special* as well, so the rules don't apply to them, either.
For me, I was more frustrated that parents for the past 20 years haven't seen that social media is clearly destructive and harmful for just about anyone under age 20, (and it's destructive for a lot of people over 20 as well). If they had seen that, there wouldn't have been any need f
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Yes! Start jailing children!
Seriously, do you even realize how deranged and violent you sound?
Clueless parents (Score:5, Funny)
In a study published on Friday, eSafety also found most children aged between 10 and 15 were using social media just as frequently in March as they had before the ban came into force on December 10 last year, while parental awareness of their habits decreased.
If you bought a smartphone/tablet for your kid, what do you think they're using it for, crushing walnuts?
It was never about "the kids" (Score:5, Insightful)
These laws have nothing to do with protecting kids, and everything to do with stripping adults of their privacy. The kids will find workarounds like VPNs or AI generated IDs, because they have no alternative; meanwhile most adults will grudgingly hand over their ID cards and subject themselves to completely untrustworthy biometric tomfoolery rather than go cold-turkey from their daily doom scrolling.
And the world gets worse for all of us.
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These laws have nothing to do with protecting kids, and everything to do with stripping adults of their privacy.
Maybe. I suppose that's a side benefit that some are excited about, and the worst of those will abuse it. Mostly these laws are symbolic: the ruling class doesn't really care about any of this. They're busy arranging government contracts for their spouse's private business, getting their kids no-show non-profit chairmanship jobs, etc. The "ban" is their sop to the latest moral panic, and enforcing it generally would be nasty, so they just enact it with no real enforcement plan and get back to lining the
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"These laws have nothing to do with protecting kids, and everything to do with stripping adults of their privacy" - False. These laws are aimed solely at getting kids away from social media addiction.
Did anyone expect there would be 100% compliance?
Nothing to do with "stripping adults of their privacy", where did you get that idea, it's not true
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These laws are aimed solely at getting kids away from social media addiction.
Then the lawmakers need to have their competence questioned, because this is the absolute dumbest and least effective way to accomplish it.
Nothing to do with "stripping adults of their privacy"
Don't worry, it's in the pipeline. Because their bans don't work (and never were going to work), they'll ramp it up in some way shape or form. Whether that comes in the form of the government tracking more of what you do, or forcing the social media companies to log/hold even more information on people to "determine their age".
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Hasn't stripping adults of their privacy always been what the internet is used for?
Re: It was never about "the kids" (Score:1)
It's dreadfully simple: if you want to keep kids off the interwebs, you have to prove you're not a kid, do you not? So you pass a law which says that as a company providing social media must effectively positively identify the entire user base in that locality. Are they going to erase that proof once a positive identification is made? Of course not! It's a value added proposition to these companies, which in addition to pitching advertisements, operate as data brokers. Positively identifying your users only
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Most "social media" are messaging platforms, or actually what the name implies: social. I share something with my friends, why would a child have less incentive to share anything than an adult? ... and all the others shared some photos too.
Are you coming to the party tonight? Oh you missed it? Here are some photos
Social media bands for kids: make no sense at all. They fake their ids. And most kids who have a sense, faked them long ago.
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Banning teens from social media will never be widely successful - Because it doesn't need to be.
These laws have nothing to do with protecting kids, and everything to do with stripping adults of their privacy. The kids will find workarounds like VPNs or AI generated IDs, because they have no alternative; meanwhile most adults will grudgingly hand over their ID cards and subject themselves to completely untrustworthy biometric tomfoolery rather than go cold-turkey from their daily doom scrolling.
And the world gets worse for all of us.
I live in Australia. I am a grown up. I haven't given ID to anyone online since this ban. It hasn't affected my grown-up life one bit. I can still bank, do business, read the news and communicate with people online just like I have always done.
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These laws have nothing to do with protecting kids, and everything to do with stripping adults of their privacy.
Very, very likely. They must have known this would not protect kids at all. Just another fake excuse to create a surveillance-state and then something far worse in the next step. Evil people doing evil things.
Utter bollocks (Score:2)
The Australian law explicitly prohibits platforms from requiring ID [legislation.gov.au] or retaining personal data [legislation.gov.au] collected for age assurance.
Don't know about Australia (Score:3)
That's because the suburbs have basically spread us out to such a ridiculous degree that kids don't have a lot of opportunities to socialize. And no school doesn't really count you get maybe a half hour for lunch.
Hell people have been talking about how suburbs isolate people for ages. And it's only gotten worse. Back when my kid was in high school they were a good 40 minutes away from their closest Friend by bus. By car it was something like 10 minutes but like most places my city's bus system sucks balls. And when you have two or three hours of homework a night minimum sometimes as much as four or five that's just not going to cut it.
I suspect it was less of a problem for us old farts because not only were a lot of us in denser living conditions but even if we weren't we didn't have the crazy amounts of homework that modern kids get. Admittedly it's been years since my kids have been in high school but as far as I know that hasn't changed and kids still get multiple hours of homework a night despite all research showing that doing that's very counterproductive... More of the puritanical bullshit you just can't shake from our shitty culture.
So pretty much the only place your kids get to socialize unless you are very well off or they are very lucky is going to be on social media.
We could of course do away with the suburbs and make walkable cities but the car companies are worth tens of billions of dollars so there sure is shit not going to let us do that even if you could convince old people who are hung up on cars to do it
I suspect that old people are just going to keep grinding their kids into dust. Honestly I think most of us didn't want to have the little shits anyway. Men want sex and women want babies.
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Okay, that's just lazy talk, and making excuses. If people aren't interacting in person then it's not due to distance, it's from conditioning.
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This is why young people hate us old farts. Things have changed from when we were Young and we refused to acknowledge that and blame young people for the problems we caused them. And when they become maladapted because of all the dumb shit we dumped on them we get even angrier that they didn't turn out the way we wanted them to. Which is especially fucking hilarious because it was our job to raise them.
Meanwhile you completely misunderstood my comment. Or yo
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Exactly what drugs are you on?
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In America taking away social media from your kids would be pretty fucked up. At least assuming you can't either taxi cab them around town, buy them a car and get them a license or pay for a shitload of taxi rides
No grandpa, kids go tear assing around on their e-bikes now. [wftv.com]
Ironically, Florida does have a social media ban for under 14s, but it's mostly toothless. So, I wouldn't be to quick to jump to the conclusion that these troublemakers did this because their doomscrolling was taken away.
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Except social media is not socializing. It's an excuse for not socializing. That's exactly why it's popular with kids and adults.
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Did you just say "social media" and "socialising" in the same idea? Do you actually have a fucking clue what is being discussed? Virtually no one socialises on social media. Kids aren't sending each other TikToks, or posting on each other's Facebook. Get a fucking clue.
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Kids aren't sending each other TikToks, or posting on each other's Facebook.
What else are they doing then? Enlighten us!
When I have to surrender my tablet to a kid: it is doing exactly what you claim it does not.
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You can tell this one spent his childhood expanding his spider collection.
Kids in suburbs "socialize" with great enthusiasm. They are constantly at one another's houses, or borrowing mom's crossover to go somewhere with their friends. Before they can drive, mom is wrecking the planet driving her progeny all over creation for every kind of sportsball you've ever heard of, and a number you haven't. The parents all have each others phones because they're constantly trying to figure out which friend their
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In America taking away social media from your kids would be pretty fucked up. At least assuming you can't either taxi cab them around town, buy them a car and get them a license or pay for a shitload of taxi rides That's because the suburbs have basically spread us out to such a ridiculous degree that kids don't have a lot of opportunities to socialize. And no school doesn't really count you get maybe a half hour for lunch. Hell people have been talking about how suburbs isolate people for ages. And it's only gotten worse. Back when my kid was in high school they were a good 40 minutes away from their closest Friend by bus. By car it was something like 10 minutes but like most places my city's bus system sucks balls. And when you have two or three hours of homework a night minimum sometimes as much as four or five that's just not going to cut it. I suspect it was less of a problem for us old farts because not only were a lot of us in denser living conditions but even if we weren't we didn't have the crazy amounts of homework that modern kids get. Admittedly it's been years since my kids have been in high school but as far as I know that hasn't changed and kids still get multiple hours of homework a night despite all research showing that doing that's very counterproductive... More of the puritanical bullshit you just can't shake from our shitty culture. So pretty much the only place your kids get to socialize unless you are very well off or they are very lucky is going to be on social media. We could of course do away with the suburbs and make walkable cities but the car companies are worth tens of billions of dollars so there sure is shit not going to let us do that even if you could convince old people who are hung up on cars to do it I suspect that old people are just going to keep grinding their kids into dust. Honestly I think most of us didn't want to have the little shits anyway. Men want sex and women want babies.
I'm skeptical of this conclusion.
When we were primarily a farming civilization, the physical distances between kids and the nearest kids they weren't related to wasn't orders of magnitude different from what it is today. Indeed, considering how many people live in cities - offsetting the weirdos who live dramatically far away from any neighbors - things are much better for kids today.
Also, there's a difference between social media and contact. There's nothing preventing Australian kids from texting, c
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I think you are missing important details here. Kids still have their chat groups and socialise over them, pretty much as they did before. The difference is just that these chat groups aren't tied to a social media platform any more.
Before the "ban" there was a lot of pressure for kids to be on one particular social media platform or another, depending where their
Well colour me surprised! (Score:2)
Most, but... (Score:2)
If everyone does not have a required foolproof (Score:2)
And if there is a government ID mechanism that works then there is no anonymity or privacy because the
government and corporations are incapable of keeping information secure and/or not using it to attack their
opponents(political and business) for power and profit.
Wrong approach (Score:3)
Better approach is to ban the business models used by social media that make them so addictive and harmful. And if a social media business does not comply, fine it 100% of its revenues in your jurisdiction.
If they still don't comply, request Zelensky to pull a Wildberry trimming operation on their data centers.
It's the social media companies who are the evil ones here, not the users who need age-restricting.
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This.
Ban the practices, not the platform. We know about the harmful practices, make them change the apps.
eSafety more like eDumbass (Score:1)
with social media platforms' failure to implement effective age assurance measures cited as the main reason," eSafety said in a statement
Because there *aren't* any effective age assurance measures that exist, you stupid fucking cow.
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Because it's not fucking possible to do it. You might as well fine them for not being able to divide by zero.
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At least I'm not a scared little pussy.
Looks like a great success (Score:4, Insightful)
Despite being poorly implemented by platforms nearly 20% of kids have stopped, and so soon after the laws were enacted? This seems to have worked better than expected. A few fines in the direction of Facebook and Google will improve these numbers further.
Then you just need to wait. When smoking was banned for under 18s the day after they still smoked as well. These days smoking is rare. The current generation is a lost cause, they'll VPN their phone addicted brains to get their daily fix of TikTok if they need to (my niece in Australia is the type of person who would watch two twitch streams in parallel and then have a mild panic when someone asks her to put the phone away at the dinner table, it's insane).
The next generation now stands a chance. People are less likely to join social media as a new customer if they need to jump through hoops to do so.
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Despite being poorly implemented by platforms nearly 20% of kids have stopped
You need to read better. 86% usage before the ban, 81% usage after the ban. 5% stopped - depending the margins of error on each survey.
When smoking was banned for under 18s the day after they still smoked as well. These days smoking is rare.
In AU, this is only because of gov strict import control of tobacco and the fact that if a teen is caught with cigarettes, they are also punished in some form. A teen caught on social media in AU is not punished. There is no incentive, or reason, for teens to respect the ban.
if they need to jump through hoops to do so.
A VPN, which is all you need to defeat any of these bans, isn't really a hoop to jump through. They'r
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You need to read better. 86% usage before the ban, 81% usage after the ban. 5% stopped - depending the margins of error on each survey.
Plus what percentage of the 5% said they stopped, but didn't?
Australia has always been a nanny state. Australian politicians think the average Australian is a moron that needs to be protected from themselves. Zero respect for the power of the free market. Anything that anyone considers a vice (or even just slightly bad for your health) is either banned or effectively banned through extreme taxation.
We should vote in Pauline Hansen / One Nation (Trump-style populists) to send a message that we are not goi
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I gather that suntzu3000 would prefer it that companies should be able to do whatever the hell they want with no limits or restrictions
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I gather that suntzu3000 would prefer it that companies should be able to do whatever the hell they want with no limits or restrictions
Right, because the only alternative to a nanny state is total anarchy.
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You need to read better. 86% usage before the ban, 81% usage after the ban. 5% stopped - depending the margins of error on each survey.
Or we could look to the numbers in the previous story on this which said 30% stopped. The numbers vary depending on method of recording. The reality is some people have stopped. Success.
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Or we could look to the numbers in the previous story on this which said 30% stopped.
You could. But doing so is inaccurate. And it doesn't combine in any way to equal 20%.
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You could. But doing so is inaccurate. And it doesn't combine in any way to equal 20%.
Congrats, you discovered the point I was making while trying to counter it.
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You haven't countered anything. You haven't provided anything accurate, unique, or relevant.
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Aww, another sad little pussy.
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These days smoking is rare.
Really? Where do you live?
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In a place where smoking is prevalent because our government is doing nothing to stop it. Unlike in say ... Australia where teenage smoking is now in the sub 5% range which is an insane decline compared to when I went to school there.
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We actually don't need anecdotes. We have actual statistics to work with which show that smoking rates in under 18s have plummeted. Also what do you mean a kid smelling of smoke would have been noticed immediately? Yes. The answer is yes. Kids smelled of smoke. But you couldn't punish kids for smelling, you could only punish them for catching them in the act, and even then only on school grounds. ... Sorta... I went to a private school so there was a "disgracing the uniform" policy that many kids got in tro
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What retard marked this insightful, when it's both factually wrong and otherwise full of bullshit?
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We thankyou for your thoughtful and detailed rebuttal. Your value to the discussion and society as a whole has been noted.
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I see Bahbus rates his own made-up facts over actual facts
None of this matters (Score:3)
None of these laws matter. The banned population is smart and even if VPNs stop working they will find a way around the ban - like joining Vk or something similar. I'd like to see the Australians impose their demands on the Russians on this one...
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Addicts will work around the ban. This generation is already lost. The ban helps start a new generation of addicts, the kind who haven't yet been fed algorithmically designed addiction.
Hey, here's an idea, I've got this awesome new site, you'll love it! All you need to do is jump through a whole lot of hoops to get to it. You in? If so I'll send you the 10 step instructions!
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No need to help you. If you're actually addicted you'll figure it out.
Maybe get addicted to an education instead. Words have meanings, and neither Uber Eats or Fortnite meet the definitions of the words you used in that same sentence.
Redirect (Score:1)
Just simply banning doesn't really show much understanding into what it's like to be a kid.
I was talking to a young fellow about the Roblox chat control. He told me he lost touch with many friends.
It's their life.
So it needs the other end of this to connect up as well.
A stick without the carrot isn't going to work as well as having both.
Well then (Score:1)
Sigh (Score:2)
Ban it for them.
I recall as a rebellious 13 year old, I started smoking. Developed a 2+ pack a day habit. Started drinking. It wasn't because I enjoyed it all that much, but it was an adult thing, and forbidden. Turned 19 and quit. Wasn't fun any more. Now it's coffee, and the occasional wee dram of a good bourbon or perhaps tequila on date night with the missus.
But now there is a new "adult" thing for the kids.
It is not to say that soci
Re: Sigh (Score:1)
It doesn't matter if they continue (Score:2)
The teens will continue to use them, we knew it in advance.
But as long as they are not supposed to be there, it is more difficult to sell adverts for them. So there is less point in designing products to get the next generation addicted. And if the government notices addictive content is still targeting the teens, it is now more easy to effectively ban it. Advertising companies (that's what social media are) cannot argue thee are deprived of a legitimate market since that market has been outlawed.
But, yes,
Most 10-15 year olds ... (Score:2)
This was always the plan. (Score:1)
Keeping social media from harming kids requires curbing the use of dark patterns in software. It would have to apply to the operating systems, web sites, and thousands of apps on every app store. Few politicians are willing to fight tens of thousands of software and gambling companies. The lobbies that would create would make combined militarism contractors, the drug industry, and the oil industry look like ants.