The Australian government’s legislation seeking to ban access to social media for people under 16 has received plenty of attention in International media, mostly leading with the government’s that 4.7 million accounts were banned or deactivated when the legislation came into effect. Rather less attention has been paid to discussion of the outcome within Australia, where the consensus is that there has been very little effect for most. With most kids still active, the minority who have been caught by the ban have suffered feelings of ostracism and exclusion When discussing the issue on my own social media (which had few if any teenage readers to begin with) I’ve only had one parent report their kids being thrown off.

Before coming to the real issues, I’ll point out that the 4.7 million figure is almost certainly bogus. Depending on guesses about the age range of those affected, this would imply between two and four accounts per kid. For reasons best known to themselves, the government gave specific numbers for Meta, but for no one else. Of the ten platforms subject to the ban, Meta had three – Facebook, Instagram and Threads which together issued 0.5 million bans, of which Instagram accounted for 330 000. That leaves 4.4 million for the remaining seven, including niche sites like Twitch and Kick, along with X, which is not very teen-oriented. It appears that the largest “ban” may involve nothing more than YouTube cancelling kids’ accounts (all that was required by the law) and shifting them on to the (much worse) public feed.

The ban was rushed through parliament a year or so ago. I wrote a series of posts criticising it at the time

The posts are here , here, here and here

I won’t recap them except to complain again the role of my bete noire, all-round charlatan Jonathan Haidt, who has been the subject of lengthy critiques on Crooked Timber for many years, long before he became an instant expert on kids and social media

Before it was implemented, he ban had strong, but not universal, support among parents of teens. However, it applied to all teens whether or not their families supported it. In this context, Albanese’s claim that “”This is families taking back control” is somewhat dishonest. The government was attempting to take control from families, though it has largely failed.

From reports I’ve seen around, a third of kids got their parents’ support to dodge the ban. In many other cases, the ban was ineffective and parents either didn’t know or couldn’t do much about it. But there was a significant remaining group of families where parents hoped that the law would give them an ace to play in the eternal dispute over screen time. The hope (which I’ve seen expressed quite literally) was that they could tell the kids “get off your phone, it’s the law”. Of course, the law says nothing of the sort, since it only binds social media companies.

For families where the kids lost accounts and parents have sought to enforce the ban, the result has often been intensified conflict, along the usual lines of such conflicts. The kids want to do what all their friends are doing, and fear isolation and exclusion while the parents see themselves as protectors. Inevitably, parents will lose most of these fights well before their kids turn 16.

I have an almost unique perspective on this, having been born in 1956, the year TV came to Australia. As a result, I was a participant on both sides of the TV era of the screen wars, first as kid and then as parent. I was also exposed to the continuous denunciations of the “idiot box” by writers like Neil Postman (amusing ourselves to death) and Newton Minow (a vast wasteland). It’s startling to read supporters of the ban (can’t find the link now) reminiscing nostalgically about spending Saturday morning lying around watching cartoons.

Where to from here? It appears that we will see some before-and-after studies both official and independent, which will provide some kind of reality check on the claims and counterclaims. Regardless, the Albanese government, having passed some hastily drafted laws (see hate speech) will declare victory and move on.

Meanwhile, the big problems of social media – the toxicity of X/Twitter, algorithmic feeds, information harvesting, the distortions produced by reliance on social media – will remain. Dealing with them would require tackling powerful US interests, which is much harder than announcing restrictions on teenagers.