Eight months after implementing a ban on under-16s accessing social media services like TikTok, Australia finds its younger users are returning in droves, new data from Qustodio showed.As of last month, 26 percent of children aged 13 to 15 were on TikTo, just 1 percentage point below the rate prior to Australia’s groundbreaking rules coming into effect, the parental control software maker said. The rate for children aged 10 to 12 is higher now than before the ban, the data showed.
The TikTok logo is displayed on signage outside the social media app company’s offices in Culver City, California, on Sept. 30 last year.
The Australian government has been at the forefront of legislating to prevent underage users from accessing services such as Instagram and Facebook from Meta Platforms Inc and TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance Ltd. Many argue the services are harmful to young users’ mental health and other countries are following Australia’s example, including New Zealand announcing plans this week.“What we’ve seen is an immediate drop to a degree, but slowly but surely the numbers have started to increase again to almost equivalent levels” for some services, said Yasmin London, a global online safety expert at Qustodio.
