Australia is doubling fines for social media platforms that fail to enforce the under-16 ban. But if the last six months have taught us anything, it’s this: bans alone won’t make kids safer online.
On Weekend Sunrise, Yasmin discussed why so many young people are still slipping through the cracks. VPNs, fake accounts, borrowed phones, deepfakes, and even parents helping them bypass restrictions mean we’re playing an endless game of whack-a-mole. Recent research suggests more than 80% of under-16s are still accessing social media despite the ban.
The question isn’t whether we should protect children online. It’s how.
Instead of focusing solely on blocking access, we should be making the internet safer by design.
That means:
- A genuine digital duty of care that makes platforms accountable for addictive algorithms and unsafe design
- Opening up device-level safety technology that Apple, Google and Microsoft already use for enterprise, so parents can choose from a competitive market of better parental control tools
- Investing in schools, parents and digital literacy so families have the knowledge and resources to navigate the online world, not just be locked out of it
The technology already exists. We don’t need to wait until 2027 for better solutions. We need to stop treating this as a problem of banning children, and start treating it as a problem of designing safer digital environments.