Social media bans go global: big tech faces a reckoning after Australia’s crackdown

Australia's ban on social media for children under 16 has triggered a cascade of similar restrictions worldwide, with Indonesia, Malaysia, and Britain all announcing their own prohibitions in recent months, according to a report by The Guardian [1]. The Australian ban, enacted in December, is the most far-reaching to date [1]. In March, Indonesia began blocking children under 16 from accessing most social media, and Malaysia followed this month [1]. Britain announced its own ban last week, aiming for implementation by early 2027 [1]. Justin Hendrix, chief executive and editor of Tech Policy Press, said the Australian move "certainly seemed to spark a curiosity among other regulators" [1]. His organization has tracked efforts in more than 40 countries to ban children from social media [1]. The push for restrictions has been bolstered by mounting lawsuits against platforms. A landmark California case found Meta and YouTube liable for deliberately designing addictive products that harmed a young user [1]. Attorney Mark Lanier argued during closing arguments: "How do you make a child never put down the phone? That's called the engineering of addiction. They engineered it, they put these features on the phones" [1]. Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, derives 97.8 percent of its revenue from advertising as of 2023, a model built on sustained user engagement [5]. YouTube, owned by Google, reported advertising revenue of $31.7 billion in 2023 [9]. Enforcement has proven uneven. Australia's government said nearly 5 million accounts identified as belonging to children have been shut down, yet a survey of 900 parents by the country's online safety office found about two-thirds of young people who had accounts before the ban retained access [1]. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer dismissed such concerns: "They get around other laws, too, but we don't say: 'Oh, look, a teenager managed to get a drink somehow, so let's not bother banning alcohol sales to children'" [1]. Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has declined to pursue a ban, calling it easily circumvented [1]. Amnesty International criticized Australia's approach as an "ineffective quick fix" [1]. Damini Satija of Amnesty said a ban "simply means they will continue to be exposed to the same harms but in secret, leaving them at even greater risk" [1]. The United States remains an outlier, where court decisions on free speech grounds have complicated efforts to impose sweeping restrictions [1].