At 12:00 a.m. on Wednesday, December 10, Australians under the age of 16 were barred from accessing Instagram, Facebook, Threads, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, X, Reddit, Twitch, and Kick. The law, known as the Online Safety Amendment Act, approved by the Australian Parliament in November 2024, requires these digital platforms to block or deactivate the accounts of users under 16, under the threat of hefty penalties. With this measure, Australia moves forward in its effort to create a healthier and safer world for its children and adolescents.
What do social networks do to us?
In May 2024, the Australian Parliament established a committee to produce a report on the impact of social media on its society. The study concluded that while these platforms offer benefits such as connectivity, access to information, and creative development, they also entail risks—especially for children and young people—of bullying, sexual harassment, or exploitation.
The report that prompted the new law also determined that the platforms’ business models encourage prolonged use, which can lead to addictive behavior. At the same time, their algorithms develop content-segmentation strategies that can be harmful to people’s mental health.
According to the 2024 World Health Organization study “Teens, Screens and Mental Health,” more than one in ten adolescents showed signs of problematic behavior on social media. This implies a pattern of practices with symptoms similar to addiction: inability to control use, withdrawal, and neglect of other activities.
Indeed, 9% of young people between the ages of 10 and 20 spend more than five hours a day on social media, according to another study conducted with nearly 100,000 children and adolescents in Spain. This research, carried out by UNICEF Spain among other organizations, links excessive use to emotional distress and anxiety in a significant percentage of minors.
This digital reality also brings other types of risks: nine out of ten minors have experienced pressure to send intimate photos; 5.7% have received sexual propositions from adults; nearly one third have accessed pornographic content at an average age of 11.5; and one in ten minors acknowledges having suffered cyberbullying.
Meanwhile, in the United States, a class-action lawsuit is moving forward against Meta over its internal 2020 study, Project Mercury, which the company allegedly suppressed. Partially declassified court documents reveal that not using Facebook and Instagram for one week reduces depression, anxiety, and loneliness.
Reactions to the new law
“It seems like a covert way to control Internet access for all Australians,” was the response of Elon Musk, majority owner of X, to a post by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announcing the bill.
Although, after the law came into force, X—like the rest of the banned platforms—has complied with the new regulation, the message reveals the digital oligarchy’s fear that this could be the tip of the iceberg of a global regulatory wave.
In addition to the affected companies, organizations such as the Digital Freedom Project, dedicated to protecting digital rights, have criticized the regulation as a violation of freedom of expression and access to information. It has also been argued that adolescents will still be able to access platforms via VPNs or fake profiles, or that the law does not include gaming sites or AI chatbots, which limits the scope of the ban.
The beginning of the end
Beyond the criticisms, the truth is that Australia has just shaken things up with its new law, giving a major boost to the process of Internet regulation that goes beyond social media and age groups. Those of us who grew up with “PROHIBITED FOR UNDER 18s” warnings have been firsthand witnesses to the damage left behind by 20 years of informational anarchy.
It is often said that “regulation lags behind the market.” This must be one of the cases where political inaction has caused the greatest harm to society. But we are still in time to correct course. In addition to Australia, various countries are advancing regulations to restrict minors’ access to social media and digital content: Denmark and Malaysia will ban its use by minors under 15 and 16 respectively starting in 2026, while Norway and several U.S. states are promoting similar rules.
The European Union is preparing a comprehensive framework that limits minors’ access to social networks, video platforms, and AI companies, allowing it between ages 13 and 16 only with parental authorization, in addition to banning addictive mechanisms and restricting advertising and recommendation algorithms for minors. This trend also extends to age controls on pornographic websites, with the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Spain adopting or proposing mandatory age-verification systems.
And in Latin America?
Since March 2025, a law has been in force in Puerto Rico that, while it does not impose an absolute ban, strengthens restrictions on minors’ access to social media by shifting control to parents. In Colombia, Law 2489 came into effect in July 2025, setting a minimum age of 14 without parental consent and prohibiting access between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. And in Brazil, the Senate approved a law requiring platforms to implement robust age-verification mechanisms, parental controls, and stronger privacy safeguards.
In response, digital platforms have argued that age verification should fall to operating systems, such as those of Apple and Google, as they would allow users to register their date of birth once and thus confirm whether they meet the required age. This idea is already reflected in regulations in countries such as Brazil and in some U.S. states, as well as in new parental-control features launched by Apple and under development by Google.
Beyond the technical solutions chosen, for children and adolescents to grow up in a healthier and safer environment, legislators in each of our countries must assume responsibility for passing the necessary laws and ensuring they are enforced.
In just a couple of decades, the Internet has transformed our lives like no other technological advance in the history of humanity. We have benefited in countless ways, and the progress would have been unimaginable at the beginning of the century. However, the lack of control and regulation of platforms with the potential to transform societies—and concentrated in the hands of a handful of billionaires—is deeply degrading global society. In the face of this dark and dangerous scenario, let us hope that the step Australia has just taken is only the beginning of a structural transformation of our new reality.
Autor
Journalist, Master in Journalism from the University of Barcelona and in Latin American Studies from the Complutense University of Madrid.
