this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2025
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The social media ban is coming, whether families like it or not: 5 ways to prepare kids and teens (theconversation.com)
submitted 1 week ago by Pro@programming.dev to c/Technology@programming.dev
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In less than four months, world-first legislation will ban Australian under-16s from certain social media platforms.

Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, X, Reddit and YouTube will all be off limits for children and teens.

It’s still not clear exactly how the restrictions will be implemented. But the federal government says social media platforms must take “reasonable steps” to delete the accounts of minors before or on December 10 and stop them from creating new accounts through age verification software.

Parents will not be able to give their consent to allow under-16s to use these platforms.

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[–] DupaCycki@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

Personally I've been in favor of heavily restricting or banning social media for anyone below 15 or 16 (or even 18, for that matter) for a long time. To me it looks like these platforms do almost nothing but harm, regardless of parental intervention, because the parents are often clueless as well.

However, YouTube is a major source of educational content, a lot of which can be legitimately useful for both school and private life. Same thing with Reddit, but not so much 'educational' as maybe informational. I'm not sure about straight up banning these two. Unlike social media (I wouldn't call YouTube or Reddit that), they actually serve some positive purposes.

In cases like these I think the best solution would be to find a middle ground, e.g., let children browse or watch, but not post. Or create sections for kids and actually put in the effort to moderate them, as opposed to YouTube Kids featuring multi-million view suggestive or straight up erotic videos, as well as scam and pornographic ads.