Way back in 2024, Australia’s new amendment, the Online Safety Act, which was proposed to congress to regulate social media more for teens, came to fruition. Almost a year later, the plan to limit social media finally went into action. On Dec. 11th, 2025, 10 very popular social media apps were banned by the government, including TikTok, Instagram, “X” and Snapchat. These apps and more are now unavailable to nearly 6 million people, a quarter of the entire continent. This only applied to minors in the area, with fines reaching as high as 35 million dollars for certain non-compliance from the owners of these banned sites, such as not taking proper measures to prevent people under 16 from accessing them.
By the time the month-long ban was over, over 5 million Australian teen accounts were deleted and will never be recovered, with the assistance of eSafety. eSafety is an online organization meant to regulate online protection for popular apps and websites. This includes restricting harmful or abusive content online. This platform doesn’t just work in Australia, but rather the whole world. These eSafety teams, namely lawyers, researchers and analysts, are focusing on safety for teens. They are currently working on banning or limiting social media in other regions, including Europe and even beginning to spread to America.
With awareness about social media consumption rising again with Australia’s bill, more and more ideas are being thrown around, like the KOSA (Kid’s Online Safety Act) potentially limiting social media for teens in America for the future. America has made efforts to limit social media before, and this indicates that it wouldn’t be off the table for it to happen again. For example, a nationwide TikTok ban took place in early 2025, but was lifted less than 24 hours later due to backlash.
This time, backlash to these policies in Australia has not been as strong. Although those affected have spoken out with support from the social media companies involved, there have been no efforts to revoke the ban, potentially meaning a permanent social media ban elsewhere.
