A ban parents can get behind

Australia's ban on social media for under-16s may force parents to consider the harm it does to children

- Shweta Sharan

"I wish I could move to Australia!" That was a sentiment expressed by a mother of two teen boys soon after she heard about Australia's recent decision to bar children under 16 from using social media.

Is such a ban practically possible to implement? Minimum age verification can be tricky but the Australian government promises to work with experts and the industry to find ways to implement it without collecting personal information.

What's interesting about the law is that it will not penalise parents or children. Instead, it puts the onus squarely on companies like Meta, X, Snap, ByteDance (TikTok) and Reddit. If they fail to keep children from accessing their platforms, they could be fined up to $32 million. Naturally, it has drawn the ire of billionaires like Elon Musk, who described the legislation "a backdoor way to control access to the Internet by all Australians".