Commentary: 85% of kids in Australia still using social media - has the ban failed?

BRISBANE, Queensland: Six months on from Australia’s under-16s social media ban taking effect, the early verdict from headlines and children themselves has been blunt: It isn’t working.A new study published on Wednesday (Jun 24) in the British Medical Journal appears to add even more weight to this judgment.Led by University of Newcastle public health researcher Courtney Barnes, the study found very little evidence that kids had stopped accessing restricted social media platforms such as TikTok, X, Facebook and Instagram.But the question “are children evading social media age checks?” might be the wrong one to ask when considering the long-term success of Australia’s world-first experiment.

ISOLATING THE EFFECT OF THE BANThe team behind the new study followed 408 adolescents aged 12 to 16, surveying them just before the law took effect in December 2025 and again three months later. They compared teenagers just under the age cutoff with those just over it to isolate the law’s effect.They found more than 85 per cent of under-16s were still using restricted platforms at follow-up, mostly through their own accounts.Two-thirds had encountered age verification, but the most common form was simply being asked to state their age. A minority used fake accounts or private browsing to access social media. But the use of a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to evade the ban was rare.When the researchers checked whether under-16s used social media any less than the just-over-16s who were free to keep their accounts, they found no meaningful gap at the age cutoff.The researchers were transparent about the study’s limitations. The analysis was underpowered (which means the study may not have had enough participants to detect an effect if one existed). The sample sizes either side of the cutoff were also small.Nevertheless, these results square with recent research from the eSafety Commissioner that showed roughly seven in 10 children kept their accounts after the law came into effect.So, case closed, right? The ban is a failure? Not quite.