Australia's social media ban for those under 16 takes effect on December 10, 2025. The law requires platforms to take "reasonable steps" to prevent under-16s from creating accounts, though specific details about the age verification methods remain under development. While platforms must comply, parents are unable to consent for their children to use these platforms.
This is a synopsis of the upcoming "social media ban for minors" in Australia at the end of the year. And while I think banning anything normally has the opposite effect on the product, I do agree that kids shouldn't be on social media in the ways that they currently are. And while I am in defence of parents taking responsibility, the unfortunate fact is that most do not take responsibility for their kids in any significant way that matters, which is evidenced through so many indicators of people suffering from childhood all the way into adulthood.
Parents need to be guardians.
Guardians of their children's future.
And even though the social media ban is unlikely to have the desired effect in the areas where the most problems lay, what it does do is increase the thirst for alternatives to the current crop of platforms. Essentially, the platforms have the responsibility to ensure that there is adequate age verification, or they will be fined. However, in the case of a decentralised platform like Hive, who are they going to fine?
There is no single owner.
Not only this, while there is a social aspect to it and it could mimic Facebook, TikTok or YouTube, it also isn't only a social media, because all Hive actually does is record transactions. The interfaces themselves might be considered social media however, which raises the question as to whether something like @Peakd or @Ecency would ever come to the attention of the legislation, though I suspect it would require a large influx of users.
Even so, that influx could happen, as while Australia are the first to make such a move like this, it is clear that many other countries are considering similar, even if only to appease the masses by showing they are "trying" to do something, or as a revenue exercise. And as more countries look to ban, more people will look to offboard centralisation and embrace decentralised experiences. I say experiences, because I believe that being on Hive can alter the way we look at the entirety of our life, not just what we see through the screen. And the more people interact with it, the more they will look at the rest of the offerings and say....
"Huh? WTF have I been doing?"
Centralisation is the process of enrichment of a decreasing minority, not the spread of resources effectively to the majority. We can see how in the last 100 years, the concentration of wealth has narrowed at an increasing rate. And while for the first half of the process there was significant increase in global improvement, the back half has seen an accelerating decrease in many areas of society, which is fuelling a lot of the global unrest in the world.
Previously, decentralisation at the global level and still maintain scale wasn't possible, because the technology didn't exist to organise it. This meant that to achieve scale advantages, centralisation was the way to go. However, centralisation isn't self moderating, it is self-perpetuating. And like eating junkfood, without moderation, the negative effects can quickly spiral.
If the economy was a person, it would be overweight, and riddled with cancers and mental problems.
Decentralisation isn't a fringe idea to dabble with, it is something that must happen to improve the health of the economy and society in order to save us from the minority. I am not talking of a class war here, more that if we are to effectively develop what we need to advance as a healthy species, we need to spread the development processes, rather than being reliant on small pockets of massive control with an agenda to maximise itself. With the oncoming onslaught of automation through AI, this is even more imperative.
Banning doesn't work, if there are no healthier alternatives. This means that we as a society have to develop healthier alternatives to the things that harm us. It is unreasonable to think that people are just going to stop using the things that harm them, especially when they are considered integral parts of life and they are addicted to them. The alternatives have to offer an incentive to make the shift and a punishment for not. The major incentive for Hive is pretty clear in terms of tokenisation, and if the bans ramp up globally, the punishments will be applied outside of Hive. This means that there is the potential for Hive and other decentralised experiences to attract a large number of users, looking to find a new home and, earn a little of something along the way.
Hive is healthier.
We tend to equate success of something to the amount of money it generates, but in terms of societal outcomes, we can see that this is a very poor metric. We need to judge business on the health outcomes for society, not on wealth. Wealth can be averaged to make it look like society is improving, even if average health is decreasing. Average health needs to increase, regardless of what the financial economy is doing. Centralisation of wealth and power increases the dysfunction of society.
But what government or corporation will give up power and profit?
Taraz
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The US has had a pretty loose law around the age of 13 for quite some time now. In fact, Google is actually pretty unforgiving about it. For example, if a student uses their school account to sign up for a service they they aren't old enough for Google totally locks their account down. Even the top level domain admins aren't able to open it back up. I have several colleagues who have had to totally create new accounts for the students because they lied about their age or got theirs locked.
Yeah, it shouldn't be "too hard" to make it age-proof for the majority, but there are always workarounds. I am more interested in what people do after they lose access.
They probably just create a new account. Rinse and repeat.
the revenue earning approach will likely create automatic fines if discovered. Some AI tool, like they use for speeding, or not wearing a seatbelt.
I think that banning or restricting social media isn't the solution, but bilding safe online environments. Still today, I see the famous social media platforms advertise videos of fake investments with the label "Sponsored" I think they don't control the content they take as ads.
They control the algorithms, so they control the content. They know what is there at least at a high level.
The way children who are under 16 are getting involve in social media this days is becoming alarming especially when they access TikTok most especially. This in most cases isn't advisable as the negative part of it is affecting them. The ban would help if it is put in place but then parents who don't look after their kids wouldn't make it things work out if they don't check up on them to know their activities they do online.
Many parents have no idea what their kids get up to at all - let alone the stuff that the kids want to hide from the parents. TikTok children are going to be senseless adults.
I think desperate teenagers can circumvent this obstacle by getting adults to create accounts for them, since one person can own multiple social media accounts. They wouldn't be caught because the account would be in the name of the adult but it would be used by the teenagers. Creating healthier alternatives is a good option, like Social platforms where teens can go to learn lots of Important stuff. Let's see how this policy plays out in Australia.
Yes. But it also creates a bit of a problem in some way and might come with fines for the adult if discovered. Would you take the fine to get your kid on Facebook?
While it would be wonderful to have an influx of new users into HIVE, unfortunately I don't see it happening. People are sheep and will flock to what they are used to like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, etc...
The thing with the Australia ban, is that no one under the age of 16 will be able to use the other social medias. It is an opportunity to capture part of a market. It doesn't take many to make this place lively :)
Heck, if we got 1% of Facebook users that would make this place very lively :)
0.1% would be enormous :D
The quality of content on social media is declining. Parents aren't taking enough responsibility in this regard. Some families are paying attention, but others are unconcerned, unaware of the dangers, or expecting the government to handle everything. Hive is great. There are informed people here, and the content is of a higher quality. However, it might not be of much interest to 16-year-olds.
The quality at least. Most of it is AI generated crap looking to trigger the algorithms.
In our country, although many activities of children under the age of 18 have been banned, there are no laws on the use of social media. It is evident that this is a very serious matter because of the wave of crimes that has been going on since the past. As I have seen, girls as young as 8 and 9 are releasing semi-nude videos on TikTok social media, and even rapes have occurred through them. Parents must definitely intervene and take responsibility to prevent such things. Another boy is releasing YouTube videos with obscene words. That is to increase views. How can parents not be concerned about these social media activities now? Parents should be aware of all the activities of their children even if they are in the same house. For that, the government should not wait until it formulates laws and censors social media.
Pretty messed up, isn't it?
Meno just had to insert a front-end moderation option into his Snap-App due to Apple/Google shop regulations. It hides the snaps on the front end, but of course, they can't be deleted from the chain.
Though I see regulations and rules as necessary, there is a nasty part in what most governments do these days. They put money into regulation and enforcement of the latter, instead of providing and education that would make the regulations obsolete. Most laws and regulations these days are necessary because people are increasingly lacking common sense, awareness and critical thinking.
I do agree that HIVE is different. The potential it has besides the earning tokens is enormous, and just today I wrote the first post from our business account, which will be focusing on getting people into HIVE mainly through transactions, but also by hinting out the perks of an authentic social media, without advertising and such. If you have time, it would be great to get some feedback from an experienced Hiver like yourself. Here's the link.
Or that the senses they have, have been trained to lie to them, so their behaviours do not align with reality :)
I will come have a look.
Thank you for stopping by the Pandala post! Always glad to have your feedback.
About senses, I think we can be trained to wrongly interpret them, but there will always be something nagging. It will never completely feel right. Now, most people will choose to ignore that for the sake of comfort. But still.
In some dimensions the current or most widely used implementations of social media are bad tools. Meaning you can use them to get some things done, but you may injure or impair yourself in someway in the process.
Kids probably don't have the requisite restraint and discernment to minimize the damage done by bad tools. Heck many adults don't even use most social media well.
Longform or slower social media can mitigate some of the downsides of reactionary, or rapid cycling formats.
Most I know struggle in some way, but the kids more. Those kids will become adults though.
While I like the idea of banning under 16 from social media, it's a good start because kids are becoming something else because of the influence of social media, I also think there should be a law that regulates it also for others above 16.
Social these days isn't safe for just kids but for also some aldut, content that people put out there and advertisement mostly isn't good for our consumption.
I also feel alternatives should be created to keep kids engaged and distract them, if not humans will always find a way around to fill the void in their hearts
I am not a fan of regulation of this kind, but unfortunately, the platform designers are smarter than society as a whole.
Hive looks like it should be number one social media and I hope we get there because it can fix this problem. Banning isn’t enough, kids need safer options and parents actually paying attention. That’s the only way this will really help
Would be nice if there was an influx of users here who actually wanted to use it to interact, not just earn.
That's true , i feel like that's an effect we get after we get big and the content becomes like the ones on YouTube and Tiktok and Instagram. Many niches for everyone from different backgrounds
We have way too much government in our lives, especially since 2020. It should be the parent's responsibility to monitor what kids are doing or their smartphones (or if they have a smartphone at all), not big brother.
The problem with parents, is that many are just as idiotic as their kids. Should kids suffer because parents their parents are fools?
this one time.. at band camp.. :P
You think Australia is bad? You should see what's going on in the UK.