According to engadget, Australia’s Communications Minister Anika Wells just announced that Reddit and streaming platform Kick will be included in the country’s under-16 social media ban starting December 10, 2025. They join the previously announced list of Facebook, X, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube and Instagram. The legislation passed in late 2024 puts the responsibility on platforms to police underage users rather than parents. Companies that don’t take reasonable steps to block children under 16 face penalties up to AU$49.5 million (around $32 million). Australia considers this list a starting point and won’t rule out adding more platforms like Discord, Twitch, GitHub and Roblox.
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The enforcement nightmare
Here’s the thing: this sounds great in theory, but the practical implementation is going to be a complete mess. How exactly are platforms supposed to verify that every single user is over 16? We’ve seen age verification attempts fail spectacularly before. Remember when various states tried to implement porn site age checks? They were privacy nightmares that mostly just drove users to VPNs.
And what counts as “reasonable steps”? That’s incredibly vague legal territory. Does asking for a birth date during sign-up qualify? Because we all know how effective that’s been. Or are we talking about mandatory ID verification across social media? That would be a privacy catastrophe waiting to happen.
The YouTube flip-flop
The fact that YouTube was initially excluded then added after protests tells you everything about how arbitrary this process feels. It was considered “educational” until other companies cried foul. Basically, if you’re big enough to complain, you might get competitors added to the list. That’s not exactly a principled approach to child safety.
Now we’ve got Reddit in the mix, which is particularly interesting because much of Reddit isn’t even social media in the traditional sense. It’s more like thousands of individual forums covering everything from programming help to gardening tips. Are we really saying a 15-year-old can’t access r/HomeworkHelp but they can browse educational websites? Where do we draw these lines?
The privacy elephant in the room
Minister Wells talks about platforms using “sophisticated technology to protect them,” but that same technology could mean massive data collection on every Australian user. To effectively verify ages, platforms would need to gather far more personal information than they currently do. We’re potentially trading one set of risks for another – exposing kids’ data to breaches and misuse in the name of protecting them.
And let’s be real – determined teens will find workarounds. They always do. VPN usage will spike, fake accounts will multiply, and we’ll create a whole new cat-and-mouse game. The companies that actually try to comply will lose users to those that don’t bother. Meanwhile, the platforms that genuinely want to protect younger users might get penalized for not being perfect.
What about parents?
By putting the onus entirely on platforms, this law effectively outsources parenting to tech companies. That’s a concerning precedent. Shouldn’t we be empowering parents with better tools and education rather than making corporations the digital gatekeepers for our children?
Don’t get me wrong – protecting kids online is crucial. But heavy-handed bans that are nearly impossible to enforce properly often create more problems than they solve. As this December 10 deadline approaches, I suspect we’re going to see a lot of confusion, legal challenges, and very creative workarounds. The road to digital safety is paved with good intentions, but this particular path looks pretty rocky.
