Children are bypassing the Australian social media ban

Australia has been in the vanguard of legislation to try and reduce the influence of social media on children and young people - their ban for under 16s was introduced on the 10th of December 2025, to great fanfare, and a lot of interest around the world. But how effective are these bans at keeping children away from social media? New research just published on BMJ.com has looked at that question of efficacy - finding that children are using the most simple tactics to evade the ban. To dicuss what that means, we're joined by two of the authors of that research Courtney Barnes and Luke Wolfenden from the University of Newcastle, Australia. We’re also joined by Amrit Purba, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Louise Holly, from the Digital Transformations for Health Lab, in Geneva, who have written commentaries to go with that research.   Reading list Assessing early effects of Australia’s Social Media Minimum Age Act on adolescents’ social media use  Learning from Australia’s social media age restriction policy   Early data from Australia indicate that social media companies can’t be relied on to protect children