New Delhi: In December 2025, the Australian legislation passed the Online Safety Act (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill, which prohibits children under 16 from holding accounts on age-restricted social media platforms. But have Australian youths’ lives changed since?
According to a survey titled “Social media ban: the impact on young people’s news engagement,” published in the Australian Policy Online, the social media ban has had limited reach. Almost 61 per cent said the ban was ineffectual.
Almost three in five under-16s reported no meaningful change in social media access, while one in four reported a significant change. Of the teens surveyed, 46 per cent of 16-17 year olds had mixed feelings about the ban, compared to almost 34 per cent of 10-12 year olds.
Of the teenagers surveyed, 46% of 16 to 17-year-olds, 45% of 13 to 15-year-olds, and 34% of 10 to 12-year-olds said they had mixed feelings about the social media ban.
A research group from Western Sydney University, Queensland University of Technology and the University of Canberra surveyed 1,027 Australians aged 10 to 17, which was conducted in February 2026, just two months after the ban took place.
The study found that social media is the primary source of news for teens, with one in three actively following news accounts. Since the ban, news access and civic engagement have plummeted. Every second teenager said they are now getting less news than before December 2025. The survey concluded that 51 per cent of teens were getting less news as a direct result of the ban.
This comes after a 2025 report from the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority found that civic knowledge among year 6 (aged 10-11) and year 10 (aged 15-16) is the lowest it has been in the last 20 years. Despite a majority of Australian teenagers believing it is important to take action on issues that matter to them.
But the study also found that news access is not even across the spectrum. It most adversely affects younger teenagers, who have restricted and limited access to news.
It further found that two in five teens prefer getting information through social media rather than through “formal news sources.”
According to the survey, 75 per cent of teens also said that most news organisations have little to no idea what their lives are like. Another 71 per cent said that they rarely find news relevant to people their age. Most news organisations often stereotype the young as “lazy, dangerous and entitled.”
“It’s potentially quite ironic that news organisations advocated for the social media ban,” noted the lead researcher, Prof Tanya Notley from Western Sydney University’s School of Arts and Institute for Culture and Society, reported The Guardian.