TESTIMONY: "My Son Was Addicted, the Ban Changes Nothing" — Parents vs. Banned Social Media

TESTIMONY: "My Son Was Addicted, the Ban Changes Nothing" — Parents vs. Banned Social Media

Introduction: The Digital Silence Law That Teenagers Bypass

Six Months After the Ban — The Bitter Assessment of a Pioneering Law

On December 10, 2025, Australia became the first country in the world to legally ban social media access for those under 16. A historic, bold law that its champions hoped would serve as a model for the rest of the world. Six months later, the verdict is harsh: according to a study from the University of Newcastle published in June 2026, more than 80% of Australians under 16 are still using social media. And the government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, far from celebrating, is announcing that it will strengthen the law. That is an implicit admission that it is not working.

This is no surprise to the parents who lived through these six months from the inside. This testimony gathers their voices — frustrated, bewildered, sometimes angry — in the face of a law that seemed logical on paper but collided with the reality of teenagers, technology, and human behaviour.

The VPN, the Fake Age, the Face of Beyoncé

From the earliest days of the law's enforcement, workarounds were documented. A 13-year-old girl, Isobel, bypassed Snapchat's age verification system in under five minutes by holding the phone in front of her mother's face for the biometric scan. "I heard someone used Beyoncé's face," she told the BBC. This is not a joke — it is the level of sophistication of the supposedly secure verification systems that platforms put in place to comply with Australian law.

The Uncomfortable Numbers — The University of Newcastle Study

85% of Teens Still Online — The Raw Data

The University of Newcastle study, published in late June 2026, surveyed 408 teenagers aged 12 to 17. The results are striking. Around 85% of teenagers in the age group targeted by the ban report still using social media. More than half are accessing their own accounts — not their parents'. The decline in daily use is "slight" according to the researchers, who conclude they found no "sufficient evidence that the law has had substantial effects on social media use by adolescents under 16."

A separate survey by the Molly Rose Foundation (a suicide prevention organization based in the United Kingdom), published in April 2026 among 1,050 Australians aged 12 to 15, found that more than 60% of those who had an account before the ban maintained access to at least one platform. TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram had retained more than half their users under 16.

The Workaround Mechanisms — A Damning Inventory

The methods used by teenagers to bypass the ban cover a wide spectrum. VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) allow users to mask their geographic location and present as a foreign user — although platforms are supposed to detect their use via contextual signals (photo geolocation, activity history, etc.). Declaring an age above 16 — simply by changing the date of birth in one's profile — worked for approximately two-thirds of users according to CGTN data. Parents' accounts were used directly or by proxy, sometimes with the conscious or unconscious complicity of parents themselves.

A government survey conducted in May 2026 revealed that approximately one-third of parents planned to help their children circumvent the restrictions. This figure is revealing of a deep ambiguity in Australian society itself: the law had broad political and public support, but domestic practices told a different story. The gap between declared values and actual behaviour is one of the central challenges of any digital education policy.

The Albanese Government Announces Stronger Measures — But How?

The Digital Duty of Care Legislation

Faced with the partial failure of the initial device, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced on June 26, 2026 before Parliament that his government would "strengthen" online protections for minors. One of the flagship measures announced is the "digital duty of care legislation" — a law that would make platforms legally responsible for foreseeable harms caused by their content and algorithms to underage users.

This approach is fundamentally different from a categorical ban. Instead of simply blocking access, it imposes on platforms an obligation to achieve results: if their algorithms lead to demonstrable harm for minors, they can be prosecuted and sanctioned. It is a more sophisticated — and potentially more effective — strategy because it targets the causal mechanism rather than access itself.

The Online Safety Commissioner — An Under-Equipped Office

The eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, is at the centre of the Australian device. She supervises platforms, investigates compliance, and can recommend prosecutions with fines of up to AU$49.5 million per serious infraction. In April 2026, she had declared she was considering legal action against Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube, judging that these platforms were not taking sufficient steps to exclude minors.

But the commissioner has limited resources against companies whose market capitalizations exceed $500 billion. Investigations take time, evidence is difficult to establish, and platforms have the legal resources to contest every decision. The AU$49.5 million fines — significant for a small business — are derisory for companies like Meta or Google.

The Platforms — Cosmetic Compliance and Structural Resistance

Meta and Its 500,000 Blocked Accounts — A Cosmetic Gesture?

Meta, owner of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, declared it had blocked or restricted more than 500,000 accounts of Australian users under 16 after the law came into force. That figure sounds impressive until you set it against the total scale of use. Meta also developed an age verification tool called "Age Keys" in partnership with the OpenAge Initiative, allowing validation via identity documents, financial data, facial recognition, or national digital wallets.

But the effectiveness of these measures is contested. The BBC documented cases of teenagers bypassing facial recognition systems using their mother's face or Halloween masks. A report from the University of Melbourne established that a AU$22 fabric mask was sometimes enough to fool facial recognition algorithms. Meta itself lobbied the Australian government for a "review" of the law, arguing that its unintended impacts — notably on the privacy of adults compelled to submit to biometric verification — are disproportionate.

Unaffected Platforms — The Displacement Effect

One of the most counterintuitive effects of the Australian ban is the explosion in usage of platforms not covered by the law. Discord, Roblox, Minecraft, Steam — exempted because they are classified as gaming services — saw their usage among Australian teenagers surge after December 2025. Some of these services offer social features similar to the banned platforms, with real-time interactions, content communities, and recommendation algorithms.

So even when blocking measures partially work, teenagers migrate to less regulated digital spaces, less well-equipped to handle problematic behaviour, and often with less transparency about moderation. The ban may have worsened the problem by pushing teenagers away from platforms that, despite their flaws, had invested in moderation teams — and into entirely unregulated environments.

Parents — Between Resignation, Guilt, and Ingenuity

The Testimonies That Do Not Make the Headlines

The stories circulating in Australian schoolyards and parent groups are often far from the official narrative of a protective law. Lulu, 15, simply recreated her accounts on TikTok and Instagram by declaring she was 16 or over. Her social media use is, by her own admission, "exactly the same as before." Ahil, 13, still spends about 2.5 hours a day on social media — as before the law — using false dates of birth or platforms not subject to the restriction.

Parents navigate between guilt, exhaustion, and resignation. For many, the law created a paradoxical situation: their children know how to bypass technological restrictions better than they do. Parental surveillance — already difficult in a normal family — has become a cat-and-mouse game in which teenagers systematically have the technical advantage. And some parents, witnessing the social isolation of children cut off from the same platforms as their peers, ultimately chose to help their children bypass the law rather than see them marginalized socially.

Digital Addiction — The Issue the Law Does Not Address

The Australian law does not directly address the question of social media addiction. Yet it is precisely this problem — the design of algorithms to maximize engagement and create compulsive behaviours — that lies at the heart of mental health concerns linked to social media among teenagers. The work of American psychologist Jonathan Haidt, widely cited in the Australian debate, documents the correlation between the rise of smartphones and social media and the deteriorating mental health of Western teenage girls since the early 2010s.

But even accepting this correlation — which some researchers contest — the question is whether an access ban is the right response. For genuinely addicted teenagers, a ban without appropriate psychological support does not treat the cause: it merely temporarily blocks access to the object of the addiction, without addressing the underlying vulnerabilities. A teenager suffering from loneliness, social anxiety, or a lack of real-life connection will find a way to access social media — or will retreat into another form of digital dependency.

The Impact on Teenagers — Between Isolation and Recovered Freedom

Those Who Say They Feel Liberated

In the testimonies gathered, some Australian teenagers express a sense of relief or liberation after the ban. Some describe rediscovering physical activities, creative hobbies, or simply better sleep. These positive accounts exist and deserve to be acknowledged. It is plausible that a portion of teenagers — those whose social media use was anxiety-producing or compulsive — genuinely benefit from a forced reduction in their exposure.

But these testimonies coexist with cases of real social isolation. For teenagers who primarily used social media to maintain friendships — teenagers from remote rural areas, children with disabilities who struggle with in-person socialization, LGBTQ+ youth who found in these spaces supportive communities inaccessible locally — the ban was not a liberation. It was a disconnection.

Differentiated Effects According to Profiles

Research on the impacts of screen time and social media on teenagers' mental health is more nuanced than public discourse suggests. Effects vary considerably depending on the type of use (passive vs. active, creation vs. consumption), gender (teenage girls are more vulnerable to negative impacts linked to social comparison than boys), and pre-existing family and psychological context. A law uniformly applied to all under-16s without distinction bypasses this heterogeneity entirely.

The University of Newcastle noted that its study found no evidence of a significant change in mental well-being indicators — neither in a negative nor a positive direction — in the six months following the ban. The relationship between social media use and mental health is complex and bidirectional. Teenagers in distress turn to social media for support. The ban can therefore cut off resources for help at the same time as it cuts off sources of harm.

Alternatives to the Ban — What Other Countries Are Trying

The Nordic Model of Digital Education

The Nordic countries — Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway — have developed alternative approaches that bet on digital education rather than prohibition. These programmes teach children, from primary school onward, to identify disinformation, understand recommendation algorithms, recognize platforms' emotional manipulation tactics, and develop healthy digital habits. The results of these programmes are measured differently — mental health indicators, critical thinking abilities, digital competencies — and appear more promising over time.

France launched in 2024 a law similar to the Australian one, banning social media access without parental consent for those under 15. Available French studies show that approximately half of underage users manage to bypass restrictions via VPNs. The European Commission, for its part, has mandated platforms to apply enhanced protections for minors under the Digital Services Act (DSA) — with fines that can reach 6% of global revenue for non-compliance. This approach, which targets platform behaviour rather than user access, is perhaps more promising in the long run.

The Platform Accountability Approach

The United Kingdom took a different approach with its Online Safety Act, which imposes on platforms a legal obligation to "protect users from illegal content" and, specifically for minors, to design their products in ways that minimize risks. This "safety by design" approach demands that platforms modify their algorithms and interfaces to reduce compulsive behaviours, rather than simply verifying users' ages.

This is conceptually more coherent with the actual stakes: if a teenage girl's Instagram feed repeatedly recommends weight-loss content in the middle of the night, the problem is not so much that she is on Instagram but that the algorithm is designed to maximize engagement at the expense of her well-being. Making those design choices illegal strikes at the heart of the problem. Age verification, by comparison, merely displaces the user to other platforms.

Privacy Sacrificed — The Hidden Cost of Age Verification

Surveilling Adults to Protect Children

For the Australian law to apply to minors, it indirectly imposes age verification on all users — adults included. Platforms rely on facial recognition technology, identity document scanning, or banking data analysis to verify users' ages. These data are collected by third parties — "identity brokers" — that act as intermediaries between platforms and national identity systems.

The paradox is striking: to protect children from digital risks, Australia compelled tens of millions of adults to submit their biometric data to private companies. This sacrifice of privacy drew criticism from digital rights organizations such as Electronic Frontiers Australia, which raised alarms about the risks of these mass biometric data collections.

The Effectiveness of Verification — A Technological Illusion

The age verification systems deployed by platforms did not deliver on their promises. The eSafety Commissioner herself acknowledged that platforms must "continually improve their efforts to detect and remove minor accounts." In less diplomatic language: the current systems are failing. Teenagers quickly shared workaround methods among themselves — via SMS, discussion groups not subject to the law, or simply at school.

VPN detection technology is improving but remains imperfect. Platforms can detect the use of a standard commercial VPN — but residential VPNs, which use the IP address of another real user, are far harder to detect. The race between bypass developers and the platforms trying to block them resembles the dynamic between computer virus creators and antivirus publishers — a perpetual war with no definitive victor.

The Testimony of an Australian Mother — One Voice Among Thousands

The Daily Reality of a Family Facing the Law

The accounts of Australian parents gathered in the international press since December 2025 paint a coherent picture: the law sparked family conversations on the subject, which is positive, but it has not fundamentally changed the behaviour of most teenagers. A mother quoted by the BBC — let us call her simply Mel, as in the published testimonies — says she laughed when her son told her he had bypassed the verification system using her photo. She says: "That's exactly what I expected."

This laughter mixed with resignation is perhaps the best metaphor for the Australian experience. A law supported by a majority of parents who know, deep down, that it will not change much. A law that has the merit of publicly framing the problem, of creating a legal framework for holding platforms accountable — but that falls short of the real stakes. Australian parents are not fooled. They know the battle for their children's digital mental health will not be won by decree.

Social Isolation and Peer Pressure

One of the most documented side effects of the law is the increased sense of social isolation among some teenagers who have effectively lost access to their networks. Teenagers whose parents have blocked social media access and who lack workaround methods sometimes find themselves excluded from their peer group's social conversations — which take place largely on those same platforms. Peer pressure being one of the most powerful forces of this age group, that exclusion can create real difficulties in daily social relationships.

For teenagers with pre-existing social vulnerability — those who struggle to integrate socially in their real-life environment — social media sometimes represented the primary window onto a broader social life. These teenagers, precisely those the law was meant to protect first, can paradoxically suffer from it most.

Australia — Model or Counter-Example for the Rest of the World?

Countries Drawing Inspiration from the Australian Law

Despite its demonstrated limitations, the Australian law has inspired similar initiatives in other countries. Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Maldives adopted or announced similar measures in 2026. In the United States, several states have passed laws restricting minors' access to social media. The debate is also lively in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Spain. Australia has the merit of having opened the legal path and providing the rest of the world with empirical data on the effectiveness of these mechanisms — even if that data is so far discouraging.

This involuntary pioneer finds itself in a delicate position: it must face evidence that its law is not working as intended while continuing to defend its principle. The Albanese government's response — strengthen rather than abandon — is politically understandable but empirically questionable. It takes political courage to say "we tried, it is not working as planned, let us rethink the approach." It takes less to say "we are going to strengthen it."

The Central Question — Protect or Educate?

At its core, the Australian experience raises a fundamental philosophical and political question: does protecting children online pass through restriction or through education? These two approaches are not incompatible, but they have very different implications for the resources to be mobilized, the actors to be held responsible, and the success indicators to be measured. Restriction is simpler to legislate and communicate. Education is slower, more costly, and its results are less immediately visible politically.

This debate extends well beyond social media. It connects to deeper questions about the place of the state, parents, and technology companies in educating children in the digital era. No society has yet found the perfect answer. Australia at least had the courage to search.

The Mental Health of Teenagers — The Real Stakes Behind the Law

Adolescent Mental Health Data — A Worrying Picture

The Australian law emerged in a context of growing concern for teenage mental health in Western countries. In Australia, as in many comparable countries, rates of anxiety, depression, and self-harm among teenage girls have risen significantly since the mid-2010s — a period coinciding with the mainstream adoption of smartphones and social media. The "Wait Until 8th" movement in the United States, which encourages parents to delay smartphone access until 8th grade (approximately 13-14 years old), has gained growing traction since 2023.

The book "The Anxious Generation" by psychologist Jonathan Haidt, published in 2024, provided an intellectual framework widely cited to justify legal restrictions. But even the most convinced advocates of social media's negative impact on teenage mental health acknowledge that the causal link — vs. mere correlation — remains scientifically difficult to establish. The teenage mental health crisis probably has multiple causes, of which social media is only one factor.

What Teenagers Actually Need

Pediatricians and psychologists consulted in the Australian debate converge on one point: teenagers need social connection, a sense of belonging, regular off-screen time, and engaged adults present in their lives. Technology is only a problem when it substitutes for these fundamental needs rather than supporting them. The phone is a tool — it is the use that determines whether it is beneficial or harmful. Learning to use this tool healthily is a life skill of the 21st century, no less important than knowing how to read or drive.

The real problem is therefore not access to social media but the quality of time spent online, the parental and educational presence to contextualize digital experiences, and the ethical design of platforms, which must be held accountable for the consequences of their algorithmic choices. The Australian law touches the third point indirectly through fines imposed on platforms — but it does not truly address the first two.

The Next Step — Toward a Coherent Digital Policy for Childhood

The Complementary Measures That Are Missing

To be effective, Australia's online minor protection policy would need to be completed by several measures absent from the current device. First, a mandatory national digital literacy programme integrated into school curricula from kindergarten through secondary school. Second, a regulation of recommendation algorithms that explicitly prohibits mechanisms designed to create compulsive behaviour in minors. Third, accessible mental health resources available online and adapted to teenagers — so that those seeking support in digital spaces find professional resources rather than dangerous content.

Prime Minister Albanese mentioned the digital duty of care law as a step in that direction. If drafted and enforced rigorously, it could genuinely transform platform practices. But the political temptation to settle for strengthening the ban — simpler to explain, more visible politically — risks prevailing over the more demanding path of a genuinely integrated digital policy for childhood.

The Future of Global Digital Regulation

The Australian experience is part of a global movement to regulate Big Tech that has been accelerating since 2023. The European DSA, the British Online Safety Act, American state-level laws, OECD initiatives on online child protection — all these initiatives acknowledge that the platform self-regulation model has failed and that public intervention is necessary. The divergence is over the instruments: access bans, algorithm accountability, education, or a combination of all three.

Australia has provided valuable empirical data on what does not work on its own. That is its main contribution to this global debate. If governments worldwide draw the right lessons — and focus on algorithms and education rather than categorical bans — the world's teenagers will have indirectly benefited from the Australian experiment. That may be the real value of this involuntary pioneer.

Neuroscience in Service of Regulation — What the Science Says

The Teenage Brain Facing Algorithms

Adolescent neuroscience offers valuable insight into the stakes of this regulation. The prefrontal cortex — the seat of impulse control, long-term planning, and decision-making — is not fully developed until approximately age 25. In parallel, the limbic system, responsible for emotions and reward-seeking, is in full ferment during adolescence. This neurological imbalance makes teenagers particularly vulnerable to the instant-gratification mechanics that social media algorithms exploit — deliberately or not — through "likes," notifications, and endless content loops.

Researchers from the University of Melbourne published in 2025 a meta-analysis covering more than 40 longitudinal studies on the effects of social media on adolescent development. Their conclusions are nuanced: moderate and intentional use presents no significant risk; however, passive and extended use — particularly endless scrolling — is associated with a statistically significant increase in depressive symptoms and social anxiety among teenage girls. These distinctions — between types of use, between genders, between contexts — are precisely those that a binary ban law is incapable of capturing.

The Distinction Between Addiction and Problematic Use

Mental health experts insist on a distinction that public debate tends to ignore: not all intensive use of social media is a pathological addiction. Some teenagers use social media intensively in a functional and non-damaging way — to maintain ties with distant loved ones, share creative work, or follow topics they are passionate about. Pathologizing all significant use distorts the debate and leads to ill-adapted legislative responses.

The true criterion for intervention should be functional impact: does this use persistently disrupt sleep, real-life relationships, academic performance, or mood? If so, it is a warning signal that merits a personalized response — not a universal law. The Australian Paediatric Society has in fact recommended that the government accompany any legislation with a mass training plan for doctors, pediatricians, and school psychologists to identify and support teenagers in situations of problematic use.

The International Dimension — Is Global Regulation Possible?

The Paradox of Nationally Regulating a Worldwide Internet

One of the fundamental limits of the Australian law is geographical: the internet has no borders, but national laws stop at national borders. The platforms the Australian law attempts to regulate are American companies whose servers are dispersed worldwide and whose policies are set in San Francisco, Seattle, and New York. National regulation, however well designed, runs structurally into this cross-border reality. An Australian teenager who uses a VPN to access a platform via a Canadian or European server is no longer subject to Australian law.

This technical reality implies that effective social media regulation cannot be purely national — it must be at least regional, ideally global. Organizations like the OECD, the Council of Europe, and coalitions of states are working on international governance frameworks for major technology platforms. These efforts are slow, complex, and constantly confronted by industry resistance and divergences between legal systems. But they represent the only realistic path toward regulation that cannot be bypassed by a simple VPN click.

The European Approach — The DSA as an Alternative Model

The European Union chose a different path with the Digital Services Act (DSA), which entered into force progressively from 2024. Rather than banning minors' access, the DSA imposes on major platforms obligations of algorithmic transparency, risk audits for vulnerable users, and robust parental control options. Platforms that do not comply face fines of up to 6% of their global revenue — an amount sufficiently dissuasive to modify industrial behaviours.

The comparison with the Australian law is instructive. The European approach is structurally more ambitious because it targets algorithms and business models, not just users. It is also more compatible with fundamental rights, notably freedom of expression and the right to privacy. But it is more complex to implement, and its real effects on teenagers' mental health can only be measured over the longer term. Both approaches — Australian and European — attest to a global awakening. They differ on tools, not on diagnosis.

Conclusion: The Law Is Not Enough — What Really Needs to Change

The Honest Assessment of a Courageous but Insufficient Law

Six months after it came into force, the Australian law banning social media for those under 16 has not achieved its stated objectives. More than 80% of targeted teenagers continue to use banned platforms. Workaround mechanisms are well known and widely used. Adults' privacy has been sacrificed on the altar of an age verification that verifies nothing seriously. And the government is compelled to strengthen a law that is not working rather than fundamentally rethinking its approach.

This does not mean the intention was bad. Protecting children from digital harm is a legitimate and urgent objective. But the tools must match the intentions. And the simple ban tool proved — as many experts had predicted — insufficient against teenage resilience, technological complexity, and the cultural inconsistencies of a society that says it protects its children but helps a third of them bypass the rules it set for itself.

What Tomorrow Must Look Like — For Children and Their Parents

The real programme for protecting teenagers online requires a multidimensional approach: regulate toxic algorithms, fund systematic digital education, support accessible mental health resources, and hold technology companies accountable on a financial scale proportional to their revenues. That programme is harder to legislate, longer to implement, and less politically spectacular than a ban. But it is the only one with a chance of working over time. Australian children — and all children — deserve it.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

Who I Am and What I Think

I am Maxime Marquette, columnist and analyst. I am personally concerned by the impacts of social media on teenagers' mental health. I consider that major technology platforms bear a real ethical responsibility — insufficiently exercised — toward their most vulnerable users. I am skeptical of simple legislative solutions for complex technological and social problems. I do not have children, which may distance me from the practical reality lived by Australian parents.

What I Do Not Know

I do not have access to the raw data of the cited studies — I rely on their published summaries. I cannot evaluate with certainty whether the announced strengthening of the Australian law will be more effective than the initial device. The long-term effects of the law — notably on adolescent mental health indicators — cannot yet be measured with only six months of perspective. Australia is a unique country with a particular social context, and lessons drawn do not mechanically transpose to other countries.

Sources

Primary sources

ABC News Australia — Australia will strengthen social media ban for children safety — June 25, 2026

NPR — Australia plans to strengthen laws banning children from social media — June 26, 2026

The Guardian — Four in five under-16s in Australia using social media despite ban, study shows — June 24, 2026

CGTN — Australia to strengthen child social media ban despite limited impact — June 26, 2026

Secondary sources

Fortune — Australian teens say social media ban is futile — April 25, 2026

CNBC — Australia banned social media for under 16s a month ago — here's how it's going — January 15, 2026

EFE — Australia's social media ban on minors: 6 months on — June 4, 2026

BBC News — Australia's teen social media ban can be 'effective', report says — September 1, 2025