VIDEO: The switch off for teenagers on social media looms

JASON OM, REPORTER: We’re told Australia’s world first social media ban is what’s best for under 16s, but will it protect or punish our kids?

ESAFETY ADVERTISEMENT: For the good of Noah, for the good of their wellbeing.

ZOEY BENDER (TikTok video): I think this is digital exclusion and this is unfair

JASON OM:  The ban is coming on December the 10^th when the tech companies behind YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Reddit, Kick and Twitch will be required to block underage accounts.

PROF. LISA GIVEN, RMIT UNIVERSITY:  I think December 10th is really going to be mayhem. I think we're going to wake up that morning and there'll be many of us that are shocked to find that we're not on the platforms we've come to know and love. 

JASON OM:  Teenage social networks could suddenly disappear with Meta moving early to purge half a million children from Facebook and Instagram from December the 4th.

TikTok plans to deactivate 200,000 Australian users aged between 13 and 15 while Snapchat will lock underage accounts.

ZOEY BENDER (TikTok video): Stop trying to silence the youth because we’re the next generation and we have opinions and we’re going to share them. 

JASON OM:  But some, such as, 14-year-old TikTok creator Zoey Bender won’t be going quietly.

ZOEY BENDER:  We will all be upset. We are not happy about it. We're not okay with it. None of us are, anyone that is saying that kids are excited or parents are excited are wrong. 

JASON OM:  While an adult holds Zoey’s account, she’s uncertain about what will happen to her 43,000 followers.

ZOEY BENDER:  My account could very well be flagged or banned. I don't want to lose my creative outlet. I don't want to lose my platform. I don't want my friends to; I don't want my followers to feel alone because a lot of them had said that social media is the place that really gives them a community.

BJ NEWTON, ZOEY’S MUM: They're our kids. It should be our choice and our responsibility to ensure that they're safe online.

JASON OM:  Some advocates like Robb Evans want us to remember the ban is designed to reduce harm.

His 15-year-old daughter, Liv had an eating disorder and took her life in 2023.

ROBB EVANS:  She had 38 hospital admissions. 

LIV:  Hi everybody. I’m in hospital in this kid’s ward…

ROBB EVANS:  She had tried to end her life 13 times before the final one. And unfortunately, it was just, she'd gone to such a dark place with it all that she found no way to recover from it. 

JASON OM:  Robb was among the families who lobbied the Prime Minster to introduce the ban.

ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER:  Liv was just 15 years old.

ROBB EVANS:  She would show me something and she would come to me and say, “Dad, have a look at this, this young girl here is saying that she has 200 calories a day and that she's healthy”. I said whether they're just doing it for clicks, likes, their own validation, but I said, it is not real. It's not true. You cannot survive on that. 

But then of course, as we know, the algorithms, once you start to look at content like this, your whole algorithm gets warped. 

It's my belief that if this ban was in place, then I think Liv would probably still be here.   

JASON OM:  The world will be watching how Australia’s ban plays out as other countries follow suit.

Last month Denmark announced plans to ban children under the age of 15 but still allow parents to decide social media use from the age of 13.

CATHERINE PAGE JEFFERY, UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY:  These arguments that we're having are not entirely new.

Actually, let's go back a few decades, and we can see similar debates with the widespread adoption of television into homes.

JASON OM:  But some rights advocates such as media lecturer Catherine Page Jeffery argue the ban denies children their right to access digital technology.

CATHERINE PAGE JEFFERY: Rather than booting young people off these platforms, what we need to be doing is placing greater responsibility onto the platforms themselves to actually make these spaces safer for young people.   

I think a lot of the risks that we do see online are often things that are also faced by young people offline. Things like bullying, low self-esteem, anxiety. We need to be really careful not to conflate causation with correlation. 

JASON OM:  So as the great switch off looms, will it be a merry Christmas for Australia’s teenagers?

ZOEY BENDER:  It’ll be very different. It'll be a lot sadder because we won't get to have vlogmas, which is just where every day you vlog, it's like a vlog every single day up until Christmas. There also won't be Christmas hauls, which is where you show what you got for Christmas. 

JASON OM:  Now we all know that social media is a bit glitchy and the government freely admits that some adult users might be kicked off by mistake.

LISA GIVEN:  If I am a 40-year-old adult and I happen to be a toy collector, I like comics, I may follow different child-focused accounts for very legitimate reasons, the system might use all of that evidence and presume that I'm actually a 14-year-old and therefore not eligible to have the account.

JASON OM:  But there will be ways to get around the ban.

LISA GIVEN:  The one that we've heard a lot about of course, is VPNs, virtual private networks. This technology is something that people can simply download onto their computer, and it effectively means they can pretend that they're not here in Australia. 

Another workaround is that an older adult could simply create an account and hand that over to the child.

ZOEY BENDER:  Yes, I'm planning to get around it. I'll find a way around it and once one person finds a way around it, it'll spread like wildfire, and everyone will know within a week. 

JASON OM:  So you'll still be on social media after December 10? 

ZOEY BENDER:  I'll find a way to be. 

JASON OM:  As a mum, you are comfortable with Zoe being on social media despite the ban. 

BJ NEWTON:  A hundred percent, yep. I'll be supporting her 

ZOEY BENDER:  Because she'll be monitoring it. 

JASON OM:   And they won’t be breaking the law because it's up to the companies to keep them out or face fines of up to $50 million.

LISA GIVEN:  I think many of these cases are going to end up in court, particularly if fines are threatened or imposed on the companies

I think what X might do is absolutely nothing. Elon Musk has certainly been very open about seeing that platform as a space for open dialogue and open speech and not restricting access. 

JASON OM:  So, whatever happens in the next few weeks, you might want to back up your content.

ROBB EVANS:  This isn't going to be perfect, but I think what we have done here as a country has made the decision to say, we're not going to put up with this any longer. We need to make change.