In December 2025, the world crossed a threshold. For the first time, access to major social media platforms requires a date of birth. A new law in Australia means that people under the age of 16 can no longer legally have accounts on major social media services.
What began as parental warnings and optional “age checks” has morphed into something more fundamental: a formal reshaping of the Internet’s social contract—a reshaping increasingly based on the assumption that young people’s participation in networked spaces is hypothetically dangerous rather than conditionally beneficial.
Australian law requires major platforms to block any user under 16 from having an account, or they will face fines approaching 50 million Australian dollars.
Platforms must take “serious steps” that rely on identity checks, biometric checks or algorithmic age verification instead of self-declared ages, which can be easily falsified. The law officially went into effect on December 10, 2025, and from that date, major platforms will have to delete accounts of under-16s or face consequences.
This is not just the case in Australia. On the other side of the Atlantic, the European Parliament has proposed sweeping changes to the digital lives of minors across the European Commission.
In late November 2025, MEPs voted overwhelmingly in favor of a non-binding resolution that would make 16 the default minimum age for access to social media, video-sharing platforms, and even AI assistants — unless parental consent is given. Access for 13-15 year olds would still be possible, but only with consent.
The effort is part of a wider EU effort. The Commission is working on a harmonised “age verification scheme application”, designed to allow users to prove they are old enough without revealing more personal data than necessary.
This tool could become part of a future EU-wide “digital identity wallet”.
Its goal: to prevent minors from wandering into corners of the web that have been designed without taking their safety into account.
Several EU member states have already taken action. Countries such as Denmark are proposing to ban social media for those under 15 unless parental consent is given. Others – including France, Spain and Greece – support tough limits across the EU to protect minors from harmful content, addiction and privacy violations.
The narrative of harm – and its limits
The effectiveness of these measures remains uncertain, and the evidence is more complex than the public debate suggests. Much of the current regulatory momentum reflects heightened concern about potential harms, based on studies and reports showing that some young people experience negative effects in certain digital contexts – such as anxiety, sleep disturbances, cyberbullying, distorted self-image, and difficulties with attention.
These findings are significant, but do not indicate uniform or inevitable resultsAcross all surveys, the impacts vary significantly by individual, platform, feature, intensity of use, and social context, with many young people reporting neutral or even positive experiences.
The strongest evidence, taken as a whole, does not support the claim that social media is inherently harmful to children. Instead, it points to clustered risks associated with specific combinations of vulnerability, design, and use.
European lawmakers are touting studies showing that one in four minors engage in “problematic” or “dysfunctional” smartphone use. But presenting these findings as evidence of universal addiction risks collapsing a complex spectrum of behavior into a single moral diagnosis—a diagnosis that may conceal more than it illuminates.
On the surface, the logic seems convincing: We would never leave 13-year-olds unsupervised in a bar or casino, so why leave them alone in an attention economy designed to capture and exploit their vulnerabilities? However, this comparison silently introduces an assumption – that social media are inherently harmful environments for adults only – rather than infrastructures whose impacts depend heavily on design, governance, rules and support.
What is lost when we generalize the damage?
When harm is treated as universal, the response almost inevitably becomes one of universal exclusion. Nuance collapses. Differences between children – in temperament, resilience, social context, family support, identity and need – are flattened into a single profile.
The Internet, however, was never meant to serve just one type of user. Its power came from its universality — from its ability to give voice to otherwise voiceless kids: shy kids, marginalized youth, LGBTQ+ people, inner-city teens, creators, identity seekers, those who feel alone. For many young people, social media platforms are more than just entertainment. They are spaces for learning, writing, peer support, political awakening, and cultural participation. They are the place where teens exercise argument, humor, creativity, solidarity, dissent — often more freely than in offline institutions that are confined, tightly controlled, hierarchical, or unwelcoming.
When policymakers talk about children online primarily through the language of harm, they risk erasing these positive and formative uses. The child is framed not as an emerging citizen, but as a passive object of protection – someone to be protected rather than supported, managed rather than empowered.
This context matters because it shapes solutions. If social media is generally seen as toxic, then the only responsible response seems to be removal. But if the harm is situational, then exclusion becomes a blunt tool – one that protects some children while disadvantageous to others.
Generalized narratives of harm also obscure action. They imply that young people are incapable of learning rules, developing judgment, or managing risk online—despite the fact that they do so, imperfectly but essentially, in every other social domain.
This assumption can become self-fulfilling: if teens are denied the opportunity to exercise their digital citizenship, they will be less prepared when they finally have access. Treating young people’s online presence as a problem to be solved—rather than a reality to be shaped—risks turning protection into erasure. When the gate is abruptly closed, much more than TikTok updates are lost: skills, social connections, political voice, cultural fluency, and the slow, necessary process of learning how to be in public.
As these policies spread from Australia to Europe — and potentially beyond — we face a world in which digital citizenship is awarded not by curiosity or contribution, but by age and identity verification. The internet is shifting from a public square to a club with credentials.
Three futures for an Internet shaped by youth
What could this reform look like in practice? There are three broad futures that could emerge, depending on how regulators, platforms, and civil society act.
1. The Age of the Hard Pole
In the first future, exclusion becomes the primary security mechanism. More countries are adopting strict minimum age laws. Platforms are building age verification portals based on government IDs or biometrics. This model treats young people’s access itself as a risk – rather than exploring which platform designs, incentive structures, and governance failures are causing the harm.
The social costs are high. Marginalized youth may lose access to vital communities, and the Internet becomes something that young people consume only with permission – not something they help shape.
2. The Age of Hybrid Redesign
In a second future, regulatory pressure fuels transformation, not exclusion. Age-verification portals are narrow and specific. Platforms are forced to redesign for the safety of young people. It is crucial to assume that harm is contingent, not inherent – and therefore preventable by design.
Infinite scrolling and autoplay may be disabled by default for minors. Algorithmic enhancement may be limited or made transparent. Data collection and targeted advertising are limited. Privacy defaults are strengthened. More are added where needed.
Here, minors remain participants in the public sphere — but within environments designed to reduce exploitation rather than maximize engagement at all costs.
3. The Parallel Age of the Internet
In the third future, bans fail to eliminate demand. Underage users migrate to dark platforms beyond regulatory reach. This outcome highlights a central flaw in the “inherent harm” narrative: when access is blocked rather than improved, the risk is not eliminated but transferred.
The most difficult question
There is a real urgency behind these conversations. Some kids struggle online. Some platform practices are demonstrably irresponsible. Some business models reward excess and coercion. But if our response treats social media itself as a toxin — instead of asking who is being harmed, how, and under what circumstances — we risk replacing care with direct control.
A digital childhood can be safer without being silent, protected without being excluded, and supported without being voiced.
The question isn't whether kids should be online. It's whether we're willing to do the harder work: redesigning systems, reshaping incentives, and offering targeted support — rather than declaring an entire generation too fragile for public life.
Although the press releases will range from very select to rare, I said I'd pass...because sometimes the editors hide.
Excellent approach and analysis of this sensitive topic!