What Will Actually Make the Online World Safer for Under-16s? (Hint: It’s Not the Ban)
Australia’s new social media ban for under-16s has arrived with bold promises: fewer risks, fewer harms, and fewer young people lost in the algorithmic fog of online life. For many parents and educators, it feels like a moment of relief, a decisive line in the sand.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: bans don’t make platforms safer. They simply push young people elsewhere. History shows that when teens lose access to mainstream platforms, many slip into private servers, anonymous apps, VPN tunnels, or unmoderated digital spaces where no adults, and certainly no safeguards, exist.
If we’re serious about protecting young people, then safety must be built into the infrastructure of the online world itself. Anything less simply reshuffles the risk.
Below is what real protection looks like, not symbolic gestures, but structural reforms that reshape the digital environment our young people move through every single day.
1. Make Algorithmic Safety Automatic for Under-16s
Right now, the most powerful forces shaping a young person’s digital life are invisible:
machine-learning recommendation systems
“for you” feeds
auto-play loops
infinite scroll systems
maximally personalised content streams
These systems are designed to keep users engaged, not safe.
To protect young people, platforms should be required to automatically switch off harm-amplifying algorithms for anyone under 16.
That includes removing:
addictive recommendation engines
Auto-play
infinite scroll
curated feeds driven by behavioural profiling
Young people shouldn’t need to “opt out” of manipulation. Safety must be the default setting.
The outcome? A dramatic decrease in exposure to violent content, extreme ideologies, sexualised material, body image distortion, radicalising communities, and the engineered pull of doomscrolling.
This one reform alone would outperform a thousand bans.
2. Regulate the Algorithms — Not the Kids
For too long, policy has focused on regulating children’s behaviour, not the tools that shape it.
Governments must now require platforms to:
undergo independent algorithmic audits
publish transparency reports showing what minors are being shown
demonstrate risk assessments and mitigation strategies
face real penalties when they knowingly promote harmful content to young people
Algorithmic safety should be treated with the same seriousness as car safety, food safety, or toy safety.
If a product can cause harm, it must be regulated at the design level.
This is the only way to shift responsibility from children, who are still developing impulse control and critical thinking, to the companies who profit from their attention.
3. Restrict Advertising to Young People
Platforms should not be allowed to use behavioural data to target minors. Yet today, many still do, burying it in the fine print.
Under-16s should never receive:
behavioural ads
dieting or beauty-filter promotions
gambling-adjacent content
“engagement optimised” ads designed to exploit emotional triggers
These ads do more than sell products, they shape identity, anxieties, and beliefs.
Jurisdictions like the EU have already banned behavioural advertising to minors.
Australia can follow suit, and quickly.
4. Impose a Legal Duty of Care on Big Tech
A legislated Duty of Care forces companies to:
anticipate foreseeable harm
design safety into their products from day one
be held accountable when they fail
Without legal accountability, safety will always remain optional, a “nice to have” rather than a requirement. A Duty of Care doesn’t punish innovation; it aligns innovation with well-being.
5. Require Safe, Age-Appropriate Versions of Major Platforms
The choice should not be: full access or total ban.
There is a third path: demanding platforms provide age-appropriate versions with:
verified age-gating
human-moderated communities
restricted feeds
child-safe content filters
meaningful reporting tools
protections from adult-only spaces
Imagine if every platform had a built-in “Under-16 Mode” that genuinely put safety first.
It would transform the digital landscape overnight.
Safety cannot be an afterthought. It has to be architectural.
6. Fund Ongoing Digital Citizenship & Media Literacy Education
Even the safest digital environment still requires skilled, savvy users.
Young people need sustained education in:
critical thinking
misinformation and persuasion tactics
emotional self-regulation
privacy awareness
algorithmic influence
healthy digital habits
This cannot be a once-a-year lesson.
It must be embedded across the school year, ideally through:
school libraries
school camps
guided workshops
literature-based learning
narrative approaches that allow students to discuss issues in “third person,” rather than exposing personal experiences
Stories like Cyber Secrets, Brain Rot!, and Cyber Whispers already do this: they create a safe narrative distance that helps students analyse risks without feeling judged or vulnerable.
Digital citizenship must become core on-going education, not crisis response.
7. Give Parents Practical Tools, Not Just Rules
Right now, parents are expected to manage digital risk with little more than instinct and guesswork.
They need:
simple parental dashboards built into devices
clear safety controls
guidance that’s practical, not punitive
default child-safe settings at device setup
government-backed resources they can trust
Parents can only protect children when they themselves are supported.
We Don’t Make Kids Safer by Keeping Them Out — We Make Them Safer by Making Platforms Safe
A ban may look decisive on paper, but it doesn’t address the real issue: platforms remain unsafe by design. True protection will come from restructuring the digital world itself, through transparency, accountability, design reform, education, and parental support. This is the pathway that reduces harm. This is the policy direction that puts young people first. And this is the work Australia must begin, urgently, if we want a future where children can participate online safely, confidently, and creatively.
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