Australia this week became the first country to ban children under 16 from using major social media platforms. TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and others now face one of the toughest child-protection regimes ever imposed on Big Tech. And while critics are warning of overreach and creeping digital nanny-statism, it’s increasingly difficult to argue that doing nothing is still a defensible option.
For years, governments have stared blankly at a generational crisis unfolding in plain sight. Kids are spending unprecedented amounts of time buried in algorithmic feeds engineered to keep them scrolling. TikTok and other platforms are endlessly optimised attention traps that now function as surrogate playgrounds, babysitters and sometimes even surrogate parents. And we’ve allowed it to happen with virtually no guardrails.
Australia’s law is an attempt, however imperfect, to draw a clear line where parents, regulators and tech companies failed. A 15-year-old can’t walk into a cinema and watch a violent adults-only film. Yet the same teenager – or an 11-year-old – can spend hours scrolling through content that is often graphic or psychologically damaging.
Even the best-intentioned platforms are drowning in garbage: conspiracy content, sexualised videos and algorithmic sludge designed to provoke or polarise. So, is it surprising that governments are now stepping in where parenting standards have collapsed and Silicon Valley refuses to self-regulate meaningfully?
Still, banning under-16s outright is a big, blunt instrument.
Firstly, enforcing age verification at scale is notoriously difficult, and existing technologies – biometrics, ID scans, facial-age estimation – raise major privacy concerns. If the result is a system that requires children to upload ID documents or scans of their faces to profit-driven foreign companies, Australia may have solved one problem only to create another.
There’s also the argument that social media, for all its toxicity, offers positive spaces: creative expression, community building, learning, social belonging and, in some cases, a safe space for kids who can’t find one offline. A total ban risks throwing all of that out with the bathwater.
Potential for abuse
And then there’s the geopolitical concern. There’s a worry that democracies like Australia could slip into the regulatory approaches of the likes of China and other authoritarian states. Once governments begin drawing lines around who may access what information, the potential for abuse becomes very real. Online protections can quickly turn into censorship.
Yet, for all these legitimate concerns, the argument for some form of intervention remains compelling.
The hard truth is that many parents have abandoned their responsibilities. Handing a smartphone to a child has become the new pacifier – a digital tranquilliser to keep them quiet. It’s not unusual to see pre-teens bingeing violent, sexual content or adult humour content on TikTok or YouTube while parents look on with indifference or resignation.
Read: South Africa urged to do more to protect kids online
Society does not allow children to walk into bars, buy cigarettes, gamble online or attend adults-only films. We recognise that minors need protection from environments that their developing brains cannot yet navigate safely. Why should social media be treated any differently?
The Australian model, for all its rough edges, is an important statement: childhood should not be defined by staring at a screen. Kids deserve offline lives, human interaction, boredom, imagination and real-world experiences. These things should not become relics of a pre-algorithmic age.
However, the solution must be proportionate. Social media regulation should never become a pretext for governments to police political speech or silence dissent.
Any attempt to widen these powers into controlling what adults see, share or access online would be a red line for democratic societies. The “think of the children” argument has been used before as camouflage for censorship; South Africa, like many countries, should be vigilant as it watches Australia’s experiment unfold.
There is no doubt that Australia’s ban will be messy. Enforcement will be uneven and kids will find workarounds – they always do. But the principle behind the move is sound: children should not be raised by algorithms, influencer culture and the commercial incentives of Big Tech.
The choice is not between perfect regulation and no regulation. But the rules must be accompanied by safeguards to ensure that shielding children does not become the first brick in a broader censorship wall. A democracy must be able to protect its youngest citizens without undermining the freedoms that define it.
South Africa’s policy response to online harms has been largely reactive, fragmented and stuck in outdated frameworks. The Film and Publications Board still leans on classification models designed in the age of DVDs. Meanwhile, millions of South African children use TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube daily, often with no supervision and no technical safety barriers in place at all.
Read: Australia fires starting gun on global social media reform
South Africa doesn’t need to copy/paste the Australian ban, but it does need a coherent national strategy for child safety online. The window is still open for a measured, responsible regulatory framework that shields minors from the worst of the online world while defending the free expression that keeps our democracy alive. – © 2025 NewsCentral Media
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- Duncan McLeod is editor of TechCentral
