Australia’s Under Sixteens Social Media Ban: What It Signals for Childhood, Safeguarding and the Future of Digital Reputation

Australia has become the first country to introduce a nationwide ban on social media for anyone under sixteen. News outlets are calling it radical. From the vantage point of someone who works inside crisis PR every single day, it feels overdue. When you spend your life navigating the fallout of online behaviour and digital harm, you quickly realise how absurd it is that we have been treating social media like a harmless playground for children.

Platforms do not operate as static tools. They shape perception, identity and behaviour. They are built to influence, to escalate, and to capture attention. Adults struggle with the psychological load of these environments, yet we pretend that early teenagers, and in reality many children far younger, can manage them responsibly. This is the gap Australia has acknowledged, and it sets a precedent that the rest of the world will eventually have to confront.

A large part of my work involves supporting people who have been devastated by what the internet can do. Adults with full agency, resources and life experience break under the pressure of online hostility. They unravel after weeks of anonymous bullying, doctored screenshots, pile-ons, and misinformation spreading faster than anyone can counter it. When you see the level of damage these environments inflict on grown men and women, the idea that a thirteen year old could cope with the same conditions begins to look faintly ridiculous.

I also hear from families whose children have been targeted through social media, either because of what parents posted about them or because the children had their own accounts. The emotional impact is sharp, long lasting and far more severe than most people expect. We have created a cultural belief that early exposure is harmless, when in reality it places children inside an ecosystem that even adults find destabilising.

The Reality Inside Schools

The toxicity of social media inside secondary schools is hardly a mystery. Speak to any teacher and you will hear versions of the same story. Bullying that begins in a classroom but escalates online. Entire friendship groups collapsing because someone was removed from a Snapchat story. Screenshots circulated so widely that one mistake becomes a full year group spectacle. Children waking up to discover they were discussed, mocked or exposed while they were asleep. There is no off switch. The social dynamics of childhood are being shaped inside a system designed for conflict, speed and public humiliation.

Bullying was bad enough before social media. With social media, it is something closer to unrelenting. When I was around sixteen, right at the end of secondary school, Bebo arrived. At the time it felt innovative, but looking back it was absurd. You had a public ranking of your top nine friends. If my best friend and I had even the slightest disagreement, I would spend the evening with a knot in my stomach wondering whether she had dropped me from first to fourth. And she often had. Then it would be dissected the next day at school as if it were a diplomatic incident. That was considered mild. That was considered normal. And even then, the feeling in my stomach was awful. Children today deal with the same emotions amplified through platforms that are infinitely harsher and far more public.

It is not about incompetence or immaturity. It is about development. Children are navigating the politics of adolescence while simultaneously being asked to manage digital reputations they do not understand. If adults need PR support to survive the internet, it is not surprising that children are drowning in it.

Unfiltered Exposure to Violence and Trauma

There is also the question of what children accidentally witness online. The recent Charlie Kirk shooting footage circulated for hours before platforms could remove it. If a child had opened an app at the wrong moment, they would have watched a real act of violence unfold in front of them. Adults found it disturbing. Children would have had no emotional or cognitive tools to process it. This is the part of the conversation that is always brushed aside because no one wants to admit how little control platforms truly have. Harmful content spreads faster than moderation can contain it. We saw this with Christchurch. We saw it with Buffalo. We see it constantly.

The idea that children can simply avoid traumatic content by “scrolling past” has always been a fiction.

The Industry Will Now Have to Respond

Tech companies will resist this, and not because they disagree with the premise. They know better than anyone what their data shows. They understand how early exposure affects behaviour and long term mental health. Their issue is revenue. Annual reports do not thrive on delayed entry.

Governments have also avoided the topic because social media regulation is a political minefield. No leader wants to be accused of restricting speech or technology. Yet this ban is a reminder that safeguarding is not the same as censorship. Children already operate within age limits for alcohol, driving, voting, and employment because we accept that development happens in stages. Digital access should have been treated the same.

The Cultural Shift That Will Follow

What Australia has really done is force a psychological reset. Once one country chooses to prioritise children over engagement metrics, others will begin to question their own policies. And when norms shift, the conversation changes. Parents gain clearer boundaries. Schools gain leverage. Platforms face pressure to build safer tools or reconsider their design altogether.

We also reclaim something that has been eroding quietly for years: childhood as a protected space. Not a broadcast. Not a performance. Not a brand development period. A space where identity grows privately, not through public metrics. Most adults would be horrified if their own adolescence had been documented online. Yet we have allowed this to become normal for the current generation.

The Internet Is Not a Place for Children Yet

This ban will be criticised, but the truth is simple. The internet is not a child friendly environment. The stakes are too high, the pace is too fast, the manipulation is too subtle, and the social consequences are too heavy. Children should not be navigating a global attention economy before they have even mastered their own emotional regulation.

Australia has acknowledged this reality. Everyone else will now have to explain why they are still ignoring it.