Australia's Social Media Ban for Under-16s Has Had Limited Impact So Far

I think the average person here in Aussie land would have to agree it's having a positive effect - it's working.

>Various studies have suggested that the ban hasn't been greatly effective, largely because teens have found ways around the restrictions — not that hard when some platforms only require a self-declaration of a user's age.

I think would could say if anyone had to guess that statement is a combination of words in mouth and studies that are being commissioned at arms length by vested parties that are sour the algorithms they designed to shake the money tree of what was the teen ad industry, is now, no more.

Rules and laws are not necessarily obeyed absolutely in Australia, and some common sense still exists here. For example - don't ride a push bike without a helmet, no some people don't but wouldn't do so or allow their kids to do so in areas which prompted the helmet laws - ie high traffic. If the kids are not logged it to social media to view it, those nasty teen herding algorithms are not likely to running, so meh not much of an issue.

One has to recall the main issue with social platforms late 10s was the algorithms used that moved teen chat into darker subject areas where the target was more susceptible to particularly teen based advertising. It's something concerned citizens of Aussie land and then a govt body asked social media platforms to fix ... the response was go fish. It was too hard or whatever. After a couple of years of not going to, can't ... the govt came up with a fix. Of course quite understandably it concerned those who really valued free speech, well as free as it can be expected to be in this day and age, as the people tasked to do this were one and the same that earlier had been asked to lock down social media for everyone, not age restricted but real id required - iirc this was weeks after the same type of thing (no anonymous accounts) was being suggested / ramble BS/ whatever sounded good at the time, coming from a few higher up people in US govt after one of them got their behinds singed.

>Australia recently announced larger penalties for platforms that are breaking the law. Half of the children in the study said an age-restricted platform they used had not yet asked them to verify how old they were. Just over 37 percent said the age listed on their account was over 16, 18.2 percent said the platform got their age wrong and around 11 percent said their parents helped them get around age restrictions. Moreover, 7.4 percent said they used a VPN to get around restrictions.

Ultimately though whatever platform operating in Australia will /should not be engaging the shake-the-teen-advertising-money-tree algorithm and consequently prompting its users into darker subjects teens might obsess over.

The under 16 social media ban certainly stopped platforms from making any money from kids posting their escapades of breaking the law or doing really life endangering BS for five minutes of fame. [1]

Certainly parents who encouraged their kids to stay on social media will be thinking twice about suing any platform the kid should not have been on if their kid or others get maimed or worse as a result. [1]

Platforms that have been asked to enforce an under 16 ban will have proverbial chickens if a future event occurs which clearly will end in the law courts and couldn't help lay the blame solely at their feet.

[1] I sure do enjoy watching tv news now without news stories wrapped around this trying to elicit an emotional or political tug.