Australia's under-16s social media ban sees rise in alternatives in app store

By Ahmed Yussuf, ABC

The federal government could be left playing "whack-a-mole" as ousted under-16s flock to new social media platforms, experts have told the ABC.

The Commonwealth's long-awaited social media ban for people under 16 years old came into effect this month.

But experts have noted a rise in alternatives to popular platforms, such as TikTok and Instagram, as young people look to circumvent the ban.

RMIT University's Lisa Given, a professor of information sciences, said the legislation defined social media platforms too broadly.

But it also left the onus on regulators such as the eSafety Commission to update its list of platforms covered by the law.

"So, that means that they've kind of got to be continually working with platforms and assessing and moving in a game like whack-a-mole," Professor Given said.

"Where you've got a new platform popping up or a platform that perhaps just existed for a long time but wasn't on the radar, that now a lot of young people are migrating towards."

Apps rising in popularity

Daniel Angus, director of Queensland University's Digital Media Research Centre, said under-16s were shopping around for alternatives to stay active on social media.

Prior to the legislation coming into effect, the eSafety Commission wrote to Lemon8 and Yope recommending they self-assess to determine if they fall under new laws restricting social media use to Australians aged over 16.

But on the day of the ban, social media apps such as Lemon8, owned by TikTok's owners ByteDance, and Yope rose in popularity in the app store.

While short-form video content apps such as Coverstar and ReelShort were ranked in the top 20 most downloaded in the Android store.

"We've also seen a surge over this time in alternate media streaming services," he said.

"That could be seen as ways to continue to stream content, whether it's videos and other short clips of popular drama and other content."

The rise in alternative apps showed the limitations of the ban because it did not address the root causes of online safety, he said.

"It doesn't deal with any of the cultural issues and it doesn't actually impose any kind of requirements on platforms to clean up any of the activities within those platforms," Professor Angus said.

"So, this is a signalling policy failure already that basically children are voting with their feet and getting around this in any way, shape or form they can."

Digital duty of care, the missing piece

The Commonwealth has committed to legislating a digital duty of care, and closed its consultation survey earlier this month.

The government said it would place the onus on digital platforms to ensure safety and prevent online harms.

It would also be aligned to existing frameworks followed by the United Kingdom and the European Union.

But both experts said legislating a digital duty of care was a more pressing issue than the under-16s social media ban.

"It requires the tech companies to actually limit access by eliminating harmful content to begin with," Professor Given said.

"By constraining the algorithms in the platform as well as dealing with things like advertising, for example, and how that targets young people.

"If they can do that, they'll actually create environments that are safer for all ages."

But now, Professor Angus said young people were accessing alternate platforms that were not as regulated, safe and transparent.

"We know just little about them in terms of the dynamics of those communities … the major platforms that have been banned were the ones that we knew the most," he said.

"We could have actually come up with far more effective regulations for those, but we've essentially pushed all the kids off those ones and so missed an opportunity to actually regulate them."

- ABC