Why the Teen Social Media Ban Isn't Delivering the Results Expected

Many countries are introducing various restrictions to protect children from the negative effects of social media, but the largest test case to date — Australia's ban on social media for people under 16 — has not delivered the expected results six months in. According to a recent report from Australia's eSafety Commission, the ban had no noticeable effect on young users' mental wellbeing or on problematic internet behavior: most teens found ways around it, and the platforms themselves failed to implement adequate enforcement mechanisms.

That raises an important question: bans in their current form may be not just ineffective, but economically costly as well. According to research firm eMarketer, brands are planning to cut digital ad spending if the UK introduces a similar teen social media ban. In France, Reuters reports, a comparable ban is already facing serious legal challenges over its impact on young people's freedom of expression.

These initiatives trace back to a 2021 Wall Street Journal investigation: based on internal Meta documents, the paper revealed that the company's own research found Instagram harmful to teenage girls' mental health, but that Meta ignored the findings in pursuit of maximizing usage time and revenue. In 2024, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg publicly apologized to parents of teens harmed by Instagram during a special US Senate hearing on child safety. Meta is now fighting a number of new mental-health-related lawsuits, arguing in part that social media addiction is not officially recognized as a medical diagnosis.

New Mexico state judge Bryan Biedscheid recently issued a ruling against Meta imposing a $567 million fine along with a set of practical requirements: the company must set all profiles of users under 18 to private by default, disable push notifications from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. (8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on school days), hide like counts, and cap monthly usage at 90 hours. Many experts see this kind of parameter-based approach as more effective than blanket bans.

The core of the problem still lies in age-verification mechanisms. Meta is proposing app stores as a more reliable way to confirm users' ages, while the EU is proposing a digital identity verification system. Both approaches attempt to balance social media's benefits and harms, and both stand a better chance of working in practice than an outright ban.

Uzbekistan has not introduced broad legal restrictions of this kind so far, but the international experience offers a lesson for local marketers too: should similar measures ever be discussed here, they could significantly affect digital advertising strategies aimed at younger audiences.