A law that restricts social media use to people 16 and over goes into effect in December, but much about it remains unclear or undecided.
Australia has long been one of the most proactive countries in the world in trying to police the internet. It has clashed with Elon Musk over violent videos and child exploitation on X, forced Google and Facebook to pay for news, and tried to filter out large swaths of online content.
Its latest aim may be the most herculean yet. By December, the country wants to remove more than a million young teens from social media, under a groundbreaking law that sets a minimum age of 16 to use the platforms.
But with fewer than six months before the new regulation goes into effect, much about its implementation remains unclear or undecided.
YouTube, which young teens in Australia report using more than any other service, may or may not be covered by the law. The authorities have yet to lay out the parameters of what social media companies need to do to comply, and what would constitute a violation, which could lead to fines of $30 million or more. The government has studied how to verify users’ ages but has not released the full results of an extensive trial.
“We may be building the plane a little bit as we’re flying it,” Julie Inman Grant, the commissioner of online safety who is tasked with enforcing the law, said in a nationally televised address last month. “I’m very confident we can get there.”
The law could have far-reaching influence if Australia can succeed in getting substantial numbers of teens off social media. Several governments around the world and in various U.S. states are in the process of or planning to impose their own rules on social media for young people, as alarm over their mental health impacts and addictive nature has reached a fever pitch.
