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Australia has just made a bold move that should make every parent in America sit up and take notice: it became the first country to stop children under 16 from having social media accounts, a law that took effect on December 10, 2025. This is not some tepid guideline — it is a nationwide mandate that forces platforms to prevent account creation and to remove underage accounts, and it marks a clear rejection of the tech industry’s old business model that prioritized engagement over human decency.
The new Social Media Minimum Age rules put the onus squarely on the platforms to verify ages and to block Australians under 16 from registering, while allowing passive consumption in some limited forms. Regulators like the eSafety Commissioner and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner have spelled out how companies must perform age assurance and handle the sensitive data involved, which is supposed to include strict privacy protections and penalties for misuse.
This change didn’t come from foggy academic musings — it came from grieving parents and a national debate about real harm. The heartbreaking testimony of families who lost children to online harassment and destructive content helped push leaders to take a stand, and the Albanese government has framed the move as protecting kids from manipulative algorithms and predatory trends.
Of course the critics howl about enforcement and privacy, and some warnings are legitimate: tech-savvy kids may try to dodge blocks, and any system that requires identity checks raises the risk of data exposure if done poorly. Governments and lawmakers must not trade one danger for another by creating surveillance-style systems that collect more of our children’s data than necessary while assuming tech companies will behave better this time.
Big Tech reacted precisely as you’d expect — angry and defensive, threatening legal fights and claiming the move could backfire by driving kids to darker corners of the internet. That reaction reveals priorities: when confronted with a real choice between protecting kids and protecting profit, many platforms choose profit; heavy fines and global reputational pressure are the only language some of these companies understand.
As conservatives who cherish family, faith, and the future of our nation, we should applaud the goal of keeping children safe while insisting any solution reinforces parental authority rather than bureaucratic overreach. America must study Australia’s experiment closely, copy the good — restraint of addictive algorithms, stronger accountability — and reject any approach that hands surveillance to tech giants or erodes parental control.
If this law works, it will be a victory for common sense and for parents who want their kids to grow up free from algorithmic exploitation. If it fails, let it fail loudly so we can demand better fixes: real enforcement against bad actors, real support for families, and real limits on the power of Big Tech — because protecting our children should never be negotiable.
