MELBOURNE.– Darcey Pritchard, 15, deleted Snapchat from her phone about a year ago when she felt like she was being sucked into the algorithm.
Her friend Luca Hagop, of the same age, recently passed more than 34 hours on Instagram in a week, sharing videos of pets and other reels “so random they’re funny because they’re so unfunny.”
Amelie Tomlinson, 14, keeps in touch with her friends on Snapchat and, until recently, barely had anyone’s phone number.
Her friend Jasmine Bentley, 15, isn’t allowed to use social media, but she dreams of being content creator.
The two groups of friends, who live in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Australia, offer a small window into The Wildly Different Relationships Today’s Teenagers Have With Social Media. But they are united on one front: they do not believe that the new Australian law that prohibits those under 16 from having social media accounts, which came into effect today, will change their lives much.
Australia passed the law a year ago, preparing to be a test case for what many parents say feels like Sisyphean homework of this generation: protect children from the risks associated with social networks until they are able to navigate them responsibly.
But these teens, born around the same time Instagram and Snapchat first launched, are digital natives. Most know how to use VPN, which can help them bypass the ban. Many falsified their ages when they first registered, to surpass the minimum age of 13 years requested for many social networking services. Others used their parents’ information to obtain accounts, or have older siblings whose identities they can co-opt.
Social media is too deeply integrated into their lives. “It’s how we communicate,” Amelie said.
Darcey claimed that some of her friends had been talking about migrate to new applications. “You are not going to stop these people,” he said.
In recent years, parents around the world have grappled with growing alarm about the harms of social networks for mental health, the potential of online harassment and the effects on developing brains.
Australia was one of the first countries to pass a national law to address those concerns. Last December, established 16 years as the minimum age for social media accountswhich means hundreds of thousands of kids would lose theirs. Other nations, such as Malaysia, are following suit with similar plans.
Australia is putting the burden on the companies that own the platforms to keep minors of that age out and will not penalize parents or children who break the law. Officials, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, have sought to temper expectations that the law will be a quick fix.
They say they are supporting parents who feel helpless in the face of the lure of social media and peer pressure among teenagers. Anika Wells, the communications minister, described an almost idyllic new reality with children bursting with time for sports, baking or learning a new language.
But it will be far from being that simple. The lives and friendships of many adolescents between 13 and 15 years old are intertwined with social networkseven if they are not in them.
For example, when Darcey and her friends played an online guessing game, many of the clues were memes that everyone else had seen on Instagram. When Amelie and a friend arrived at school 15 minutes before the first bell, they made four TikTok videos. When Jasmine puts on makeup, she records herself, even if she’s not on social media. And when Luca’s mother died a few years ago, he found it helpful to write his feelings on an anonymous server on Discord.
Can a law reconfigure those impulses?
At the moment, Ten social media services are covered by the ban: Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, X y YouTube. The companies said they don’t believe a blanket ban is the best way to keep kids safe, but they will nonetheless deactivate the accounts of those under 16.
“They are taking away something that grew in us and became a part of our lives every day,” Jasmine said.
Two popular apps in Australia in the weeks before the law were Yope, a photo-sharing app aimed at Generation Z, and lemon8, a TikTok alternative owned by the same parent company, ByteDance, presaging a potential cat-and-mouse game with regulators.
When Amelie was trying to convince her parents to let her use TikTok, she pleaded her case in a five-page, single-spaced letter about not wanting to feel left out.
His mother, Catherine Best, recalled that she felt that the parents had lost control years ago. When Amelie had just started elementary school, Best removed YouTube from her daughter’s school-required iPad because she watched toy unboxing videos non-stop. The school insisted on reinstalling it because teachers were using educational videos on YouTube in class.
“That was really the gateway,” Best said, adding that the new law is too little, too late. “I feel like the horse has already bolted,” he noted.
Amelie said that, like many of her friends, she had two TikTok accounts, both set to private: one for close friends and one for a broader group. The account with her friends has her age set to 19, so she’s not worried about losing access.
but now I was exchanging phone numbers with friends for the first time in anticipation of losing your Snapchat account. This month, the app asked her to verify her age – set at 16 – with a selfie and approved her as old enough to continue using her account.
Amelie admitted how much she used her phone. Screen time “skyrockets” during school holidays. “It’s instinctive to grab the phone,” he said, “which I don’t like.”
Jasmine, her friend since the beginning of high school, stated that felt that his generation’s use of social media was misunderstood by adults. Even though she is not on social media, her group of friends often film TikTok videos when they go out.
“There is a lot of creative freedom. We are doing other things besides watching videos and moving around, there is a lot more to it,” he highlighted.
Her father, Craig Bentley, said that even if Jasmine was inevitably exposed to social media, she felt better knowing she would always be with a friend, rather than scrolling alone.
Bentley, a high school teacher, said he had witnessed young minds changing as smartphones became more ubiquitous: attention spans were shortened and self-regulation decreased.
As for the law, he considered, any effect would be for the better. At the very least, he said, it will send the message that Australia will not tolerate these apps taking control of a generation.
