Social media bans for minors go global — and the backlash has begun

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Banning social media for minors has, well , gone viral.

In less than a year, the world has witnessed a rapid-fire succession of political proposals to restrict youth access to social media: from the left-wing prime minister of Spain to the right-wing prime minister of Greece, the Australian Labor Party leader and a Texan Republican senator, and on to the national agendas of Brazil, Rwanda and, most recently, Vietnam.

Creating new government limits to keep young people off digital platforms is increasingly seen as good politics, a popular piece of legislation that touts the protection of kids while tapping into bubbling anger at Big Tech platforms. Three decades into the digital era, policymakers around the world are converging on the idea that much of the time we spend online is not good for us — and that children are the most vulnerable.

Yet eight months since Australia’s groundbreaking under-16 social media ban triggered a surge of similar legislation around the world, doubts are already spreading about both the efficacy and unintended side effects of a blanket ban.

The rash of new laws and the subsequent backlash is prompting people to ask if social media bans are going too far, too fast — and whether there may be a smarter way to protect kids online than forcing them off.

Lorena Giuberti Coutinho, an online safety commissioner for Brazil’s independent data protection authority, told POLITICO that social media bans increasingly appear “quite hard to impose,” and questioned whether global momentum for that approach would persist.

“The incentives for teenagers to continue on social media are quite strong because this is where they communicate,” said Coutinho.

Brazilian lawmakers passed a law last year that allows teenagers to keep using social media but legally requires platforms to anticipate and reduce potential harm to children. For under-16s, the law also bans targeted advertising and “loot boxes” commonly offered as online gaming rewards, while requiring the availability of parental-control tools.

Coutinho said Brazil’s law, which her agency is tasked with implementing, aims to “reach an equilibrium between the benefits that social media and the digital environment provide to children, and the risks.”

In the United States, where outright bans could face constitutional challenges on children’s free speech rights, lawmakers have been focused on challenging the platforms’ designs.

Even in California, where politicians often outpace Washington on online safety and pursue more aggressive regulations, lawmakers have moved away from a strict, Australia-style ban in recent months. Led by Democratic state assemblymember Josh Lowenthal, Californian lawmakers pared back a proposed teen ban last month to allow under-16s on sites like Instagram and TikTok, as long as the platforms deactivate certain “addictive” features for young users.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge is illuminated on December 10, 2025, the first day of the national under-16 social media ban coming into effect. | Brendon Thorne/Getty Images

“I expect other countries to learn from our model here in California,” Lowenthal told POLITICO. “For better or for worse, this is the model that’s going to work.”

Second wave

In the United States, protecting children from social media is a priority among politicians of all partisan stripes — from Texas Senator Ted Cruz to California Governor Gavin Newsom. But no legislative ban for teen users has moved forward at either the state or federal level.

There are broad concerns that bans could violate children’s free speech rights by restricting their ability to engage with lawful speech online, as well as pushback from activists, like those in the LGBTQ+ community, who say that social media can also be a place where otherwise isolated youth can stay informed and connect with peers.

Instead, the U.S. — home to the top tech giants — is where the effort to protect kids from the ills of being online is being pulled in the direction of platform liability. Attorneys general at the state level have filed a barrage of lawsuits against Meta, Google, Roblox and others via a legal strategy that pummeled the tobacco industry in the 1990s.

In California, a jury said Meta and YouTube had been negligent in designing platforms that were addictive to kids. Last week, a judge in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay a fine of $567 million, on top of the $375 million a jury awarded in March, in a case finding it guilty of endangering children and misleading the public. A Canadian mother filed a lawsuit in California against OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, alleging that the chatbot encouraged her daughter to kill herself.

That’s been noticed in Europe. In February, the European Commission ordered TikTok to change its addictive design in findings under its platform law, the Digital Services Act. A similar result came out of an investigation into Meta’s addictive design this summer.

In Britain, while new Prime Minister Andy Burnham has voiced his support for a social media ban, some industry observers say it may not be a blanket ban . Instead, the U.K. could choose to follow Canada’s proposed Safe Social Media Act, which looks to age-restrict platforms unless and until they have “adequate safeguards” in place to protect children.

“We’re actually seeing convergence on both sides of the Atlantic on the societal debate, addressing the harm online when it comes to mental health, addressing the harm online when it comes to minors,” said a senior Commission official in March, announcing a probe into Snapchat and referencing the U.S. litigation results.

Australian watershed

The December 10 activation of Australia’s ban — which prohibits anyone under 16 from keeping or making accounts on social media apps including TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, X and Facebook — was a watershed for governments looking to place limits on the internet.

Elected officials quickly saw the ready-made talking points of such measures, while the public saw that something can actually be done.

The momentum behind bans has been on stark display in France, which last month became the first European country to approve age restrictions on social media.

In the final stretch of his two-term reign, French President Emmanuel Macron turned the ban into a crowning signature priority . Macron fixed a private meeting in April with Jonathan Haidt, whose book The Anxious Generation has become a bible for parents and policymakers worldwide looking to protect kids from what they see as the ills of the internet.

The American social psychologist said that he presented Macron with data on France’s “mental health plummeting” as well as French public opinion data that showed parents on both the left and right of the political spectrum in favor of age limits. “When we ended that meeting, he shook my hand, and he said, ‘We will act.’”

French President Emmanuel Macron attends a video conference on social media age restrictions at the Elysée Palace in Paris, April 16, 2026. | Pool photo by Benoit Tessier/AFP via Getty Images

Since then, the French president has regularly reposted news about other countries following in Australia and France’s footsteps, saying “thanks for joining the movement.”

Yet in the first few months of Australia’s ban, the results have been lackluster. A July 31 report from the country’s internet regulator, eSafety, said more than eight in 10 Australians under 16 are still using social media despite being banned from doing so.

A report by a group of youth behavioral experts , delivered ahead of an expected EU-wide proposal this fall, appeared doubtful that age restrictions alone are the solution. One pointed to “circumvention” around Australia’s solution. The experts make a point of anticipating changing user habits: They recommend that solutions are aimed at all the online places where young people will be spending their time, which increasingly includes AI chatbots.

Several experts who consulted the European Commission on the proposed measures, including Leanda Barrington-Leach of the 5Rights Foundation and the London School of Economics’ Sonia Livingstone, wrote a letter to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to warn against blanket measures. Total bans are not in line with protecting children’s fundamental rights because they cut off their access to information, which may lead them to more dangerous, unregulated online spaces, the letter says.

In Washington, several bills have been proposed that would limit minors’ access to algorithmic feeds designed to keep users endlessly scrolling. Others would restrict children’s ability to download and purchase apps without parental oversight. One proposal would require parental consent for users aged 13 to 16 to make an account, but would not outright ban their presence on the platforms.

Behind closed doors in Washington, Meta has proposed online safety legislation to lawmakers that would carve out broad legal protections for social media platforms. Google and Apple, meanwhile, have been expressing their concern with bills that would require app store providers to verify users’ ages.

But the head of Australia’s regulatory body, Julie Inman Grant, told POLITICO that critics calling the country’s ban a failure are speaking too soon. She said a “normative and cultural change” associated with reducing minors’ use of social media will take time.

For pioneers of social media age bans, the global buildup is key to overcoming a tech lobby that has been successful in stalling past pushes for reform. “The more other countries come on board,” Inman Grant said, “the more pressure that is on the social media companies [to] lift their standards.”