Social media bans are imperfect. Does that matter?

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France has become the first country in the European Union to approve a social media ban for children.

So what? It won’t be the last. Other countries across the bloc – and the world – are preparing to introduce similar legislation. These bans

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  were pioneered by Australia;

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  are part of a broader backlash against big tech;

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  will not eliminate children’s access to social media; and 

Down under. Australia introduced the world’s first social media ban for children in December, setting the age threshold at 16. It places the burden of enforcement on companies, rather than children or parents, and tech platforms face fines for non-compliance.

How’s it going? Not perfectly. Although millions of accounts were initially removed, more than 85% of under-16s said they were still on social media three months after the ban started, according to Australia’s University of Newcastle. Its research cited “limited implementation, incomplete compliance, and substantial circumvention of social media restrictions”.

Another study, surveying more than 1,050 Australians aged 12 to 15, found that several major platforms had retained most of their young users, with 53% of TikTok users, 53% of YouTube users and 52% of Instagram users still able to log on to their accounts.

Why? The main reason is lax enforcement by tech platforms, with only two-thirds of the children surveyed by the University of Newcastle encountering age checks. The most common verification method was asking each user to declare their age. This was followed by photo-based software, which can has a high margin of error and be easily tricked.

Taking notice. Australia’s difficulties haven’t stopped the rest of the world from following its lead. In addition to France, whose ban starts in September, at least a dozen other European countries are considering bans, with age limits between 14 and 16. The UAE and Malaysia introduced bans in June, two months after Indonesia blocked children from social media.

Over in Blighty. The UK’s ban will begin next spring, with legislation setting out the specifics expected before Christmas. Labour also plans to put restrictions on chatbots and has proposed a voluntary social media “curfew” for 17 and 18-year-olds. These proposals follow the implementation last year of the Online Safety Act, which requires platforms to verify users’ ages and restrict graphic content.

Critics of bans say they don’t work. They have a point. But the roughly 50% drop in the number of Australian children accessing major platforms isn’t nothing. Proponents of bans argue that enforcement will eventually catch up with policy.

Will it? It’s too early to say. Last month Australia doubled its fines for non-compliance to A$99m, an amount that still seems small compared to the multi-billion dollar revenues of tech firms. Google and Apple, meanwhile, are taking steps to start age verification checks at the device level, which should make it easier to prevent underage.

Another option would be to require users to upload photo IDs, although this carries data privacy concerns. Governments could also target the features that make social media apps so addictive in the first place, such as infinite scroll and autoplay – an approach favoured in the UK.

Familiar story. There is a parallel to be drawn between social media bans and minimum legal drinking ages. Limits on young people’s access to alcohol are difficult to enforce, but are now accepted as the norm and not seen as pointless.

What’s more… The EU’s move towards social media bans comes as the bloc stands up to American big tech more generally, imposing recent fines on Google and X relating to competition, advertising practices and other offences.

Photograph by Alamy