All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not originally generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.
There is no ban on children using social media in Australia. That is a media invention, not a legal one. There is no law that criminalises a child for having an account. None.
What has actually happened is quieter, and far more significant. Responsibility has shifted. Slowly, deliberately, and long overdue.
For the first time since social media started appearing approx. 20yrs ago now, the burden is not sitting primarily on children and parents. It is sitting where it should have been all along, with the platforms that design these systems, market them aggressively, and extract profit from them at scale.
The Australian Government did not ban kids. It restricted platforms from accessing kids. That is the entire point.
For more than fifteen years, parents have been told their child is doing something wrong by being online. That they are doing something wrong by allowing it. That under 13 equals illegal, dangerous, irresponsible and bad parenting.
That message did not empower parents. It shamed them.
Australia has not banned children from social media. It has begun restricting platforms from offering unsafe services to children. This is about platform accountability, not child punishment. That is the truth and it matters because this is not a story about disobedient kids or negligent parents. It is a story about powerful companies designing unsafe systems and a media ecosystem that keeps letting them off the hook.