The House Article | What Britain can learn from Australia’s under-16 social media ban

3 min read11 min

A week before Australia’s social media ban took effect, a year 10 student told Sky News: “When I’m on social media, and I’m feeling sad, my whole feed turns sad, and then I just feel more sad… It feels like so much more effort to go tell my parents something than to pick up my phone.”

This is an issue not just faced by Australian children, but by young people all over the world, including those in Britain.

When Australia legislated a social media minimum age, the expert community was divided. Some argued platforms were a lifeline for lonely teenagers. Others insisted there was no ‘causal’ proof of harm. Parliament acted anyway, treating this as a public-health and child-development issue rather than a question of teenage willpower or parental failure.

That reframing is what the UK now urgently needs. Harmful design – algorithmic amplification of emotion, infinite scroll, engagement-maximising feeds – is a central driver of distress, self-preoccupation and loneliness during critical windows of adolescent brain development. The problem lies in systems built to maximise engagement, not in a lack of self-control among 13- and 14-year-olds.

Australia’s Social Media Minimum Age Act requires age-restricted platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent under-16s from holding accounts. Crucially, penalties fall on platforms, not children or parents. By early 2026, millions of under-16 accounts had been deactivated or restricted, confirming that platforms can detect and act on child users when legally compelled to do so.

Independent polling of 12–15-year-olds by the Molly Rose Foundation tells a sobering story: three in five who previously held accounts still have access, and most describe sidestepping the ban as ‘easy’. This is not evidence that minimum-age laws are a mistake. It is evidence that the platforms are not complying with the law. It is a failure of industry implementation, not policy.

Even so, the law has catalysed real system change. Schools have stopped automatically providing YouTube accounts through school Google setups. Parents are beginning to delay access. Medical practitioners report modest improvements in sleep, physical activity and mental health concerns. Children are being redirected toward helplines, school-moderated communities and sports facilities. This is exactly the kind of systemic shift the law was designed to encourage, a shift that is happening despite imperfect enforcement, not because of perfect enforcement.

There are three lessons that the UK can learn from Westminster. First, legislate despite expert disagreement. Australia’s law shifted the global Overton window, and platforms’ internal documents are now catching up with what parents and young people already felt.

Second, treat enforcement as a separate, sustained project. If platforms under-deliver, that is not an argument against minimum-age protections, but an argument for stronger sanctions, better-resourced regulators, and independent audits.

Third, plan from day one for a multi-layered public-health strategy, not a single silver bullet. That means clear platform duties of care, independent evaluation of school-based programmes, professional development for educators, and public campaigns that speak to adolescents in their own language using autonomy, authenticity, and real connection. It also means supporting parents to change their own habits, so that phone calls and direct messages remain the default while addictive design is pushed further out of early adolescence.

Digital environments that amplify emotions, erode face-to-face relationships, and deepen loneliness in youth should not be an acceptable norm. Australia has shown that law can pull the pendulum back. Britain now has the opportunity to go further, but only if it pairs legislation with the cultural change and enforcement muscle to make it stick.

Dr Danielle Einstein is a clinical psychologist and author who helped shape Australia’s under-16 social media ban