Countries Seek to Curb Social Media Addiction for Kids

Social media plays a significant, multifaceted role in adolescents’ development, influencing how they communicate, learn, socialize, and express themselves. The benefits, however, are accompanied by risks that can undermine youngsters’ character as well as their cognitive and social development. The potential problems include excessive screen time, social media addiction, cyberbullying, misinformation, radicalization, privacy violations, exposure to inappropriate content, sextortion, and doomscrolling. A recent study published in Nature: Human Behaviour found that adolescents who begin using social media at an early age tend to have significantly lower academic performance. A Mashable article highlights additional issues including effects on mental health, self-harm, addiction to social media, compulsive, repetitive checking, and exposure to pornography and violent material. Protecting minors has largely fallen to parents, schools, and self-regulation by some social media providers. But that approach has proven ineffective and inadequate, so some governments and policymakers have stepped in and placed responsibility on social media providers. Australia’s nationwide ban Australia was the first country to legislate a nationwide social media ban on children younger than 16—which I wrote about in January for Communications of the ACM. Enacted in December, the ban initially applied to 10 platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, X, and YouTube. It excluded messaging, gaming, and nonsocial platforms including Discord, GitHub, Roblox, WhatsApp, YouTube Kids, and educational tools. The law places the responsibility for enforcement on the platform providers through age-assurance mechanisms, requiring the platforms to take “reasonable steps” to prevent those 15 or younger from creating or holding accounts. It does not, however, apply to content consumption. Children can view publicly available posts and videos without logging in; they cannot comment or post, according to the law. The legislation mandates that the user’s age be verified with tools such as government-issued identification, biometric or facial age-estimation tools, behavioral or inference algorithms, and self-declaration with optional checks. Penalties for noncompliance can reach US $35.6 million. The 10 platforms subsequently removed nearly 5 million accounts of young users. Although the ban received widespread support, human rights organizations and digital freedom advisory groups have argued that it limits young people’s freedom of expression and access to useful information. They say the ban might contribute to social isolation and the loss of support networks, particularly among marginalized youth. Promising early outcomes The Australian ban is producing positive outcomes, according to a recent Time magazine article, “What the World Should Learn From Australia’s Social Media Law.” Early findings indicate it has reduced account ownership and social media use among young children. A YouGov survey of Australians found that 61 percent of parents of children age 16 and younger reported positive changes including more face-to-face interaction, greater presence and engagement, and improved parent-child relationships. Three in five Australians surveyed called the ban effective. The ban has encouraged social media platforms to reconsider their features. Snapchat is moving toward a friends-only experience for 13- to 15-year-olds, for example. The law is stimulating the development of purpose-built online spaces for children younger than 16 that can support their developmental needs, offering alternatives to mainstream social media. The longer-term impact could be more significant if “no social media account before age 16” becomes an accepted norm, making it easier for parents and schools to support delayed social media use. Implementation struggles Despite the early encouraging outcomes, one study found that online platforms struggle to implement age checks. Many under-16 users in Australia have continued to access platforms with little difficulty, the study said. They children have found workarounds to subvert restrictions, such as using a free VPN to bypass age checks—some of which have questionable data-collection practices. Seven in 10 children retained their existing accounts on restricted platforms, the study found. Other teens created new accounts using incorrect age information. Some were incentivized to seek unregulated offshore platforms not subject to Australia’s law. The workarounds prompted Australia to double the maximum fine and warn of court action against tech giants for noncompliance. Emphasis on age verification A number of other countries are implementing or considering social media restrictions. They include Brazil, Canada, France, Greece, Indonesia, Norway, Poland, Thailand, Türkiye, and the United Kingdom. The European Union is contemplating its own restrictions. The countries’ mandates for age v

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