After Australia banned social media for users younger than 16, teenagers "immediately worked to circumvent the restrictions," reports Fortune:
14-year-old in New South Wales, told
The Washington Post in December 2025, just
before the implementation of the ban, she planned to use her mother's
face ID to log in to Snapchat
and .
In a Reddit thread on ways to bypass the ban, one user suggested
using a printed mesh face mask from Temu to outsmart apps'
facial recognition tools. Others still have tried VPNs that obscure
their locations.
A new report
suggests these efforts are working. In a survey of 1,050 Australians ages 12 to 15 conducted last month, the
UK-based suicide prevention organization the Molly Rose Foundation
found more than 60% of teens who had social media accounts before the
ban still had access to at least one of those platforms. Social media
sites including TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, have retained more than half of their users under 16.
About two-thirds of young users say these platforms have taken "no
action" to remove or reactive accounts that existed before the
restrictions.
The survey comes at the heels of the Australian internet regulator
calling
for an investigation into the five largest social media platforms
over potential breaches of the ban.
The article points out that "Greece, France, Indonesia, Austria, Spain, and the UK have or are considering similar action, and eight U.S. states are weighing legislation that would put guardrails or ban social media use for minors.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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