Teens are still on social media, but does that mean Australia's ban has failed?

You're listening to The Conversation. One evening in April 2024, Annabelle West closed a book and turned to her husband.

My wife was reading a book called The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt.

This is Peter Malinowskis, the Premier of the state of South Australia.

She finished the book, she put it down in her lap and she turned to me and said, you better bloody do something about this.

Haidt's book about the damage social media is doing to adolescent brains suggested banning social media for under-16s.

We got to work thinking about how we could make a meaningful difference to protect kids from all the dangers that social media unregulated represents.

Malinowskis launched a summit inviting hate to speak.

Then a campaign began, led by News Corporation, which gathered political momentum until six months ago in December 2025,

Australia became the first country in the world to ban under-16s from social media.

Now other governments are considering similar laws. In mid-June, the UK announced plans to introduce its own ban on social media for under-16s from 2027.

Australia is the test case. So how's it going?

Have the teenagers of Australia emerged from a phone-lit glow to re-engage in the real world?

And what kind of difference is it having on their mental health?

I'm Gemma Ware from The Conversation, a news and analysis platform partnering journalists with academics.

Welcome to The Conversation Weekly, where experts explain how we ended up here.

In this episode, does a social media ban really work?

Susan Sawyer, you're a professor of adolescent health at the University of Melbourne and based at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, where part of your work is looking at the impacts of Australia's social media ban.

Welcome to the podcast. I'm delighted to join you. So, Susan, it's been six months now since Australia became the first country in the world to ban under-16s from social media.

How have those six months been for you, trying to track what's going on and being in the middle of it all?

I think it's been a bit of a roller coaster as we've all lived through what's been happening, what changes we've seen, what changes we haven't seen.

And it's a very exciting time to be doing research in the area, I think is all I can say. It's been fascinating.

Because it's essentially a unique social science experiment that you're living through as well. Certainly, that's the language.

When the legislation was first introduced, I was certainly describing it using those terms, that it was a social experiment on young people.

I think I've since backtracked a little, to be honest, and realised that actually,

if we look at children's exposure to social media in general, that probably that's the bigger social experiment.

And I think that the belief that many

people had that somehow there was this notion

of tech exceptionalism and that social media platforms did not need a level of regulation that we expect in every other industry.

I think that's been quite sobering to be thinking about

how do we ideally make platforms

safer, but given the degree of difficulty that countries have had in engaging with tech companies around that, what other strategies can be used?

Australia is to ban children from using social media.

The legislation will impose and enforce a minimum aid to use platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

If we go back to that time, I think I had very mixed feelings about it.

Largely, and I think very consistent with many of the parents that we've surveyed,

was the cynicism I think I had about the ability to actually get young people off social media.

And to some extent, I think that's been fair cop. It has been pretty difficult.

And Australia's eSafety Commission, our independent regulator, is having to work incredibly hard with the various social media companies in relation to that.

The Safety Commission is starting to introduce some

deeper investigations into five tech companies that it feels have not taken sufficient steps in relationship to age assurance.

So it will be interesting over the next couple of months as those investigations proceed.

Early research into the ban has found so far 70% of children still have access to at least one of their social media accounts.

Like many people at the time it was first introduced, I felt it was a bit of a blunt instrument.

I had concerns that there

were particularly some groups of young people more than others who might potentially benefit more from access to social media in terms of helping to find their tribe.

identity formation, whether that's kids who are in more isolated communities, kids who might have mental health issues, or who might identify as LGBTIQ+, for example.