YouTube Says Teen Social Media Ban in Australia Will Make Kids Less Safe Online
Australia’s under-16 social media prohibition, according to YouTube, eliminates important parental controls and puts kids at danger of being less safe online.
YouTube claims that by removing the parental controls that families depend on, Australia’s new under-16 social media prohibition will make the platform less safe for kids.
As the Social Media Minimum Age Act goes into force on December 10, teenagers under the age of sixteen will immediately be removed from YouTube accounts, making it impossible for them to post videos or leave comments. Children can still watch videos, but they won’t have access to features like banned channels, content limits, or wellbeing reminders. YouTube Kids remains unaffected.
According to Rachel Lord, senior manager of public policy at Google and YouTube Australia, the platform criticized the government’s approach as “rushed regulation” and warned that parents would “lose their ability to supervise their teen or tween’s account.” The law, according to her, undercuts almost ten years of effort to create everyday safety tools for families.
Lord stated that parents and educators share his concerns, saying, “Most importantly, this law will not fulfill its promise to make kids safer online and will, in fact, make Australian kids less safe.”
Anika Wells, the minister of communications, retorted that it was “outright weird” for YouTube to draw attention to risks on its own platform. “YouTube needs to address the issue if it is reminding us all that it is not safe,” she stated.
YouTube was initially exempt from the ban, but in July, the government changed its mind when the eSafety Commissioner discovered that it was the platform that kids between the ages of 10 and 15 most often cited when they came across harmful information. Although it hasn’t made this public, Google is said to have contemplated a legal challenge.
Regulators are also looking into Lemon8 and Yope, two quickly expanding apps that are widely used by teenagers, as the prohibition draws near. Julie Inman Grant, the eSafety Commissioner, has requested that both determine for themselves if they are subject to the new limitations.
According to Wells, the regulation is necessary to shield Generation Alpha from what she referred to as “predatory algorithms” that provide a “dopamine drip” of limitless content, even though the first few weeks following the prohibition may cause “teething problems.”
YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, X, Twitch, Threads, Reddit, and Kick are among the platforms that are subject to the prohibition. These platforms are required to cancel current under-16 accounts, block new ones, and report compliance every six months. Penalties for noncompliant companies can reach A$49.5m (US$33m, £25m).
