On December 10th, Australia began enforcing a world‑first social media age-verification law that prevents people under 16 from creating accounts on major social media platforms. Under this rule, companies like TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and Reddit must verify that users are at least 16 years old or face fines of up to about 49.5 million Australian dollars if they don’t comply.  

The government says this is meant to protect young teens’ health and safety online, but critics argue it may be hard to enforce and could affect free speech and privacy. Tech companies like Reddit have even taken legal action against the law. Most platforms use different age‑verification methods, but because age checks aren’t perfect, people can still watch some content without accounts. Therefore, this ban will not be effective. Users can easily lie about their age when downloading a social media app. Though most of these apps have age limits of 13, such as TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram, we were able to get them as early as 10 years old, as teenagers. It's as easy as going to the date of birth column and scrolling down a couple of years. Therefore, the effectiveness of this social media age restriction remains doubtful, as it is easily bypassed. 

Furthermore, these age restrictions make it simple to maneuver the system by logging into others' accounts.  If one has a parent, an older sibling, or even a friend a couple of years older than them, it's a simple sign-in. This renders age restrictions ineffective because they depend on people being honest, which one cannot promise. Instead of protecting younger users, this is just a false sense of safety.

Effectively, the only thing this ban does is teach young teens about loopholes and how to be creative about bypassing safety laws.