Australia banned social media for youth under 16. What can WA learn?

The Seattle Times’ Mental Health Project covers mental and behavioral health issues. It is funded by Ballmer Group. The Seattle Times maintains editorial control over all its coverage.

What happens when an entire country bans youth under 16 from social media?

That’s what Australia is evaluating in the first year of a national experiment that could have global implications for policy around youth and technology. 

Jeff Hancock, a Stanford University researcher working with the Australian government to implement and evaluate the ban, visited Seattle on Tuesday for a presentation and panel discussion hosted by Seattle Children’s hospital.

The concern over youth social media use and mental health impacts isn’t limited to Australia. Researchers found that about 10% of teens seen for mental health concerns at Seattle Children’s have clinical documentation of problematic social media use or excessive screen time, CEO Christopher Longhurst said at the event. The average American teen spends 4.8 hours per day on social media apps.

“For young people, social media is where life happens, friendships are formed, support is found, and identity takes shape,” said Vittorio Gallo, chief scientific officer at Seattle Children’s. “But sometimes fear and isolation follow a child home through a screen.” 

Australia’s law puts the burden on social media providers to take “reasonable steps” to prevent people under age 16 from having accounts on the platforms. If a court finds that platforms haven’t done enough, it can impose fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars ($35 million). Teens or their parents are not penalized.

The law applies to 10 platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, X and YouTube.

Data collected in March and April, when the ban had been in place for about three months, shows that the proportion of children aged 10 to 15 owning a social media account dropped from 52% to 42%. The largest declines appeared on YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok.

The data also showed that many platforms weren’t taking action yet. Half of children that said they still held an age-restricted account said the platform hadn’t asked them to confirm their age. 

“I don’t think the platforms are trustworthy partners anymore,” Hancock said. 

Verifying users’ ages is a tricky task, he acknowledges. Platforms are not allowed to require government ID as a form of verification, so they’ve been using alternatives like biometric markers — face scans that estimate age. Those aren’t always accurate, so he suggests platforms could also use age inferencing: determining a user’s age based on data they collect and use for advertising.

But even as implementation and enforcement remains a challenge, he hopes that the law will gradually change social norms. Much of the appeal around social media use comes from teens feeling that most of their peers are on the platforms, and they’re missing out if they don’t use them, he said. The three-month survey data showed that children’s agreement with both of those statements had declined.

“The norms and attitudes are important,” Hancock said in an interview. “If we can shift young people to think, ‘I don’t really need to be on it until I’m 16,’ that would be huge because it just takes a lot of weight off of the kids, off of the parents.”

It’s too early to measure how the ban has affected youth well-being and mental health, Hancock said; data collected six months into the ban will show those outcomes more clearly. That round of evaluation will also measure the policy’s effects on family dynamics, which demographic groups are most affected, and where youth and teens are spending their time instead of social media. 

Hancock is also concerned about the increasing use of artificial intelligence chatbots, which more teens are confiding in about sensitive topics including mental health: “We don’t want to be pushing them off social media and out into the warm embrace of ChatGPT.”

Other countries, including Britain, Spain and France, have said they intend to pass bans similar to Australia’s. Some U.S. states have attempted to limit access to social media accounts for children, but full bans have been blocked by judges who say the laws violate free speech. 

Washington’s state Legislature has considered a number of bills that would add safeguards for children using social media, including requiring parental consent for kids age 16 or under to create social media accounts. Another bill proposed this year at the request of state Attorney General Nick Brown would have prohibited platforms from providing “addictive feeds” or sending push notifications to minors. 

This year, Gov. Bob Ferguson signed a bill that will add mental health safeguards to AI chatbots, with more stringent requirements for minors.

At the federal level, Rep. Kim Schrier, D-Sammamish, is among the sponsors of the Kids Off Social Media Act, a bipartisan bill that would prohibit platforms from allowing children under age 13 to create accounts. It would also ban platforms from recommending content using algorithms for users under age 17. 

The Federal Trade Commission would enforce the requirements, and states could also bring lawsuits against platforms that violate the provisions.

“It’s a way to take some of the overwhelming burden that is currently on parents to try to figure out what their kids are doing online, and put the burden on Big Tech to have a duty of care to restrict the algorithms that keep kids hooked and infinitely scrolling,” Schrier said on Tuesday’s panel. “I think this is going to make it through.”