Hurdles Countries Are Facing in Implementing Social Media Bans for Minors

Australia made history last year by being the first country in the world to ban children under 16 years of age from accessing social media. Since then, several other countries like Malaysia have imposed similar bans, and many more countries are exploring how to take similar steps. We discuss some of the challenges that are being faced in the countries that have so far imposed social media bans for minors.

Many teens have devised ways to beat the age-verification mechanisms being used by social media platforms. For example, some in Australia have come up with methods like wearing eyelashes and sucking in their cheeks when taking photos needed for the age verification process. Such tricks have fooled the age verification technology, and the minors were approved to open accounts.

Others have borrowed identification documents from older siblings and used them to prove that they exceed the minimum age for those allowed to access social media. In some cases, parents have helped their underage children to open social media accounts.

The data shows that the ban has had limited success in getting under-16s off social media platforms. For example, the Australian ban took effect in December. Before the ban, 85.9% of teens were on social media. After the ban, the fraction stood at 81.5% in March of this year. That figure shows that the ban has so far had minimal success in getting kids off social media.

Some critics have argued that the decision to ban teens from accessing social media is the wrong approach to fixing the problem of protecting kids from the dangers of social media. They argue that a better approach would be to get platforms to act faster in removing content deemed to be harmful.

The design of the platforms also needs to be tweaked, the critics say. Design features like autoscroll and the design of algorithms need to be revisited to make platforms less addictive so that minors spend less time on those platforms.

Opponents of bans say that more responsibility should be placed upon platforms to be more accountable not only for the content that gets posted but also the design of the platforms so that regulators and governments don’t play an endless game of catch-up in order to remedy what platforms have either deliberately or inadvertently put out there with their commercial interests as their primary goal.

The debate on how to protect minors from the risks associated with social media and the internet in general is intensifying and corporations like Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ: META) that operate major social media platforms with a global footprint may need to rethink their business models to avoid being caught in the crosshairs of efforts aimed at reining in platforms that aren’t doing enough to protect children that use them.

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