The introduction of age restrictions on social media platforms has become a global debate. Following Australia’s lead for under-16s on selected platforms, five other countries have now adopted such measures – Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, China and Brazil – and at least 24 other countries are considering such policies, including the UK, France and Canada. As a result, Australia finds itself in a unique position as a frontrunner in global internet policy regulation.

While there is widespread support for social media age restrictions for under-16s in a number of countries, there is also considerable disagreement on how best to do so. For example, the UK conducted a three-month national consultation on Growing Up in the Online World earlier this year, which generated over 116,000 responses. While 90 per cent of parents supported social media restrictions for young people, only 19 per cent of young people favoured them. Despite the “deeply held, often conflicting” views, the Starmer Labour Government has now proposed introducing an “Australia-plus” social media ban for under-16s.

Leading up to the introduction of Australia’s Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act (SMMA), there was significant opposition among academics, children’s rights campaigners and civil society organisations, but the focus has now shifted to assessing the legislation’s effectiveness and how best to fix it.

Where the application of social media age restrictions faces hurdles, other legislation might fill the gaps. The Commonwealth Government has committed to legislating a digital duty of care, which would require online services to prevent foreseeable online harms. This will, in turn, present an issue for the relationship between the SMMA and access-based laws and legislation developed at a platform and content level, such as a digital duty of care. The ongoing question is how these measures might work in tandem to help protect young people and Australians online.

Policy cycle approach to understanding the Australian laws

The policy cycle is a familiar method for understanding how and why particular policies come into being. It can also point to moments when it went wrong or when public appetite did not meet the realities of implementation. The policy cycle can be seen as having five elements, as outlined by Michael Howlett and Sarah Geist.

Agenda-setting

In order for a particular issue to become part of a government’s policy agenda, it needs to be sufficiently significant to the public. The issues related to social media use by young people include concerns about potential psychological impacts, including anxiety, social stress, low self-esteem and emotional instability and withdrawal, as well as neurological concerns such as over-stimulation, desire reinforcement, compulsive behaviour and heightened sensitivity to social rejection.

The basis for this issue moving from a debate among psychologists and medical specialists to a global public conversation was a bottom-up advocacy process that arose from the publication of NYU Professor Jonathon Haidt’s 2024 book The Anxious Generation. In what can be regarded as an effective instance of policy entrepreneurship, Haidt’s concept of a ‘great rewiring of childhood’ struck a strong chord with a diverse constituency, particularly parents, teachers and mental health professionals but also politicians and commentators before being taken up by the Prime Minister.

Policy formation

Soft-law and industry self-regulation had become the de facto approach for invoking sovereign territorial authority and imposing command-and-control regulations on global digital platforms. Australia’s move away from this was not grounded in either rationalist ‘policy science’ or policy incrementalism. Instead, it aimed to balance minimising the potential harms of the online environment without losing the benefits of networked connectivity.

Both the consultation process and the legislation’s framing were hasty, with the consultation period lasting only around two months before the legislation was passed. The Final Report of the Joint Select Committee on Social Media and Australian Society, which did not recommend a social media ban, was released only three days before the Online Safety Amendment Bill was tabled in the House of Representatives. There were also alternative proposals that were not adopted, such as a digital duty of care recommended by the Rickard Review of the Online Safety Act.

Timeline of developments for enactment and implementation

Decision-making

In addition to allowing only a short window of consultation, the introduction of social media age restrictions in Australia also only allowed 36 hours for public comment on the draft legislation before it was tabled in the House of Representatives.

We can see four reasons why such a policy may have been introduced at speed:

1. Global technology companies have a very strong capacity – from lobbying to their control over information channels – to resist and subvert attempts by national governments to regulate or constrain their activities, leading governments to respond swiftly or not at all.
2. Social media companies have long argued that they alone are responsible for addressing issues on their platforms, but are conversely not liable for any content or harm caused on them (termed the social media paradox) – leading some politicians to call for more explicit legislation to address such liability concerns.
3. There has been growing impatience with the tech sector’s sluggish self-regulation, or technocracy, which, ironically, politicians feel the need to quickly respond to on the same platforms they are confronting.
4. There is an element of populism to such policies and as a response to opposition parties, as can be seen in Australia with the Labor Party responding to the Coalition under Peter Dutton.

It has been argued that the rushed nature of the legislation has been a major factor behind the implementation and compliance difficulties that have become apparent six months after the restrictions came into law.

Policy implementation

Three consequential processes occurred during the year between the enactment and implementation of the social media restrictions, relating to age assurance, the scope of the restrictions and data privacy:

• The Age Assurance Trial aimed to test technologies that would enable platforms to verify age without violating user privacy. It concluded that a mix of methods was required and that no single method, such as facial recognition, behavioural profiling or third-party data (e.g. a credit card), was sufficient.
• There was the contentious question of what platforms would be in scope and which platforms would be exempted. YouTube was originally excluded from the legislation but was included in July 2025, while YouTube Kids was excluded. The legislative framework surrounding Australia’s SMMA amendment was updated in March 2026 to tighten the definition of ‘social media’ for those in scope.
• Various data privacy processes played out during this time, with the Information Commissioner being obligated to ensure data privacy and the Privacy Commissioner monitoring to ensure that new data sources were not used for targeted advertising to minors or for algorithmic content.

The implementation challenges the policy has faced are illustrated by the number of young people who remain on the platforms, the changing scope and the ongoing question of what constitutes ‘reasonable steps’ for determining compliance. The next hurdle may be around evaluating its overall effectiveness.

Policy evaluation

Amid the flurry of activity around the implementation of these laws, the question of evaluating the policy has hovered in the background. The Office of the eSafety Commissioner has independent oversight of the evaluation of this policy and established an 11-person Academic Advisory Panel of Australian and international academics across the fields of health sciences, psychology, education, neurosciences and youth social research.

The evidence base suggesting a link between social media use and youth mental health is complex, and the findings contested – even before accounting for smartphone use and other emerging technology, including AI chatbots, or other factors affecting young people’s mental health. Policy evaluation can also default to assessing the policy’s operational effectiveness, losing sight of the social changes it was intended to achieve. The Academic Advisory Panel may, therefore, have their work cut out for them.

A digital duty of care could provide wider benefits

The policy cycle surely propelled social media age restrictions in Australia and instigated a global race to ward young people off social media. But in trying to address the adverse impacts of such platforms on young people, it has created new problems.

The philosopher John Dewey described this as ‘the idea [which] evokes new observations’. If the question of young people and social media continues to expand beyond minimum age restrictions, it is a problem space where all proposed policies are likely to span multiple policy cycles. It may be closer to what sociologist Celia Lury describes as a problem space.

The debate on social media age restrictions largely focuses on potential users of those platforms and is thus access-based. A digital duty of care would instead focus upon platform content and conduct. It is more in line with the issues raised in the bellwether multidistrict litigation cases being pursued against Meta and Google in the US around addictive design attributes of their platforms.

Advocates of such a measure argue that it would place the onus on platforms to design their products and services to minimise potentially harmful features, particularly (but not exclusively) for young people. Such legislation may also address issues such as misinformation and online hate speech. It could potentially address the gap that exists as a result of the failure of the Federal Government to pass misinformation laws in 2024, identified by the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.

Taking a step back and considering how the policy cycle has elevated the impact of the SMMA, as well as which measures might effectively complement such legislation, may be a more effective policymaking process.

Terry Flew is Professor of Digital Communication & Culture, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences at The University of Sydney and an Australian Research Council (ARC) Laureate Fellow. He is Co-Director of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence, Trust and Governance (CAITG).

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