Maybe the solution is kids under 16 just not having smartphones?
Why does everyone else have to change because parents can't parent?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-18/parents-say-social-media-ban-for-under-16s-ineffective/106573126
Maybe the solution is kids under 16 just not having smartphones?
Why does everyone else have to change because parents can't parent?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-18/parents-say-social-media-ban-for-under-16s-ineffective/106573126
43 Comments
Have they tried parenting? Radical suggestion I know
Your solution is too obvious. Parents can’t parent that’s CRAZY
/s
If parent can’t stop their own child from doing certain things , whoes problem is it.?
I saw a dystopian side the other day, a stroller with a mobile phone holder for the baby, I think the baby was watching Cocomelon (bad cause it’s owned by private equity).
Have parents thought about not paying for smart phones?
Or Confiscating phones?
Do something, enforce consequences?
Can’t always blame the government.
When a friend of mine had younglings, she did two things.
Gave the kids phones with SIMs tied to her account. This meant she could disable mobile data from her end.
Set up the wifi with the kids on guest mode, where it turned off at a certain time and back on again. And could be toggled outside of that as reward or punishment.
The kids could call in and out. No data meant no MMS so sharing was pointless.
Edit. A secondary thing on the wifi/ data restriction was that if one kid messed up and lost privileges, they all did. So it was teaching consequences and family loyalty.
One in all in, and the reverse was also true.
She was her childrens’ parent. Not their friend.
I parent. I regularly check our kids watch history, messages etc for nefarious things. We have built trust.
Im also a nerd, so unless they become super nerds, which i’ll quietly be proud of, to circumvent this then they would have been fine.
Recently with the Roblox ban which wasn’t even included in the government sweep, they asked us to scan faces. I scanned my own face. Now instead of having full control of my own kids accounts, they’ve deemed him an adult (i’m aware it was because it scanned my face) and now I have no control over anything on his account.
Because we have built the trust, my kid understands this and will continue with the status quo. But fuck me if it wasn’t a ridiculous solution to a problem that only a few irresponsible people with children had (I hesitate to call them parents).
Just a side note; they were never allowed access to actual social media such as Snapchat, Facebook or TikTok. There were already tools in place in iOS to prevent this.
It’s absolutely remarkable how one of the last generations to have grown up without the internet and/or social media playing a part in their own childhood now can’t for the life of them keep their own kids away from social media. FFS, you grew up fine, your kids don’t need social media to exist.
I saw this on the news. They had two interviewed parents. All I could think was “have you tried doing something yourself?”. It’s insane how they complain their kid hasn’t been stopped from using Snapchat, but they don’t attempt to take it into their own hands at all!
I think jazz music is corrupting the youth. What is Albo doing to make sure kids don’t have access to jazz?
Jesus are parents just so absolutely incapable of doing anything themselves these days
Imagine buying your kids all these devices and then expecting the government to parent for you…
Parents these days are just lazy (at least it seems that way). If you don’t want your child on social media and/or on a device, then don’t let them – they are your child, not your friend. It is no one’s responsibility but yours to parent your own child.
This is just another push for tighter bullshit laws we all knew this shit was never going to work. Now this e safety lady will get another Australia Day award for whatever uselsss law comes in.
Confiscate your child’s phone? Be a parent? Jesus Christ…
The parent in this story spent “hours” calling Apple to request removal of an app from their kid’s iCloud account… Insanity.
I saw I kid today on Tik Tok, banging on about his u12 footy team. Seems like him and his mates all have tt and aren’t even pretending to be over 16. Reported 6 of them, tt cane back and says all 6 are not underage snd no violation had occurred 🙄
Despite the strictest parental controls, Ms Williams’ 14-year-old has been able to download the messaging app Snapchat.
“I believe she clicked ‘allow’ when she’s been face-timing her grandparents,” she said.
Ms Williams deleted the app, blocked access to it on her home internet and reported the breach to Snapchat.
Felicity Williams has written to Snapchat to remind them of their legal responsibility to keep under 16s off its platform. (Supplied: Felicity Williams)
The social media company said it would investigate, but would not inform Ms Williams of the outcome, “to protect the privacy of the account holder”.
Despite her actions, her daughter again gained access to the platform after re-downloading the app through iCloud, where she didn’t need parental permission.
I don’t understand, could she discipline her daughter for continuing to download it even though she’s not allowed to? She seems like she’s tried everything tech-wise but her daughter is still getting it. Take her phone away?
Another click bait non-issue bullshit article.
Parents, figure it out yourselves. Dont rely on a govt to discipline your kids, especially one that puts money before its citizens. I know many parents from lower class to middle class that have a handle on it. Its not impossible.
> I’ve spoken to the platforms, the app store, the ministers, and the media! I don’t have anyone else left to speak to.
Have you tried speaking to your child? Maybe try sending them a snap?
Its almost like the literal entire world uses social media and taking it away from kids who have grown up with it was a brain dead move. Merit aside how does Labour expect to get this generation to vote for them when from their perspective all this government has done is make their childhoods more difficult for absolutely no reason over and over again.
How about giving them a thrashing.
Or a Nokia 3310
But are they? Because I’m not. And I don’t know any other parents who are either. No one likes to be told how to do their job.
“We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas!”
We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas!
Yes, and I’m sure they’d be happy to enforce the anti-smoking laws as well.
All devices have the ability to have child restrictions. Your home router can filter websites and there’s even third party apps that can do it too.
No shit.
Just restrict the app from downloading……………. are these parents incompetent?
“In reality, nothing is happening on the ground. It’s still being left to parents to enforce.” Boo-fucking-hoo, be the bad guy and confiscate their phone, or buy them a dumbphone that can only make calls. Yes, smart technology is super pervasive these days, but God forbid you do something besides call the app company and whinge that *they’re* not working hard enough to restrict access to their purposefully addictive product.
Yeah in case people haven’t caught on yet this has nothing to do with kids safety, there are no ‘frustrated parents’, its all a manufactured push to tighten the grip on online privacy and strip as much away as possible.
I absolutely guarantee the next step is to make VPNs illegal or something similar. Every single aspect of this whole fucking idea is to remove any level of anonymity online because we have and always will be a massively surveilled police state when it comes to internet activity.
Did you know australia is a rare country that mandates ISPs keep your metadata full FIVE years? The UN stated this was against a persons rights yet we still do it. The problem is so much of our population have zero knowledge of how things work online or they believe it wont affect them in any way until its too late.
The problem is that knowing any of this brings you to the realization that you are strapped to this minecart destined to go off the cliff and you can’t get off.
Sky News Lite FFS. No policy like this would ever be perfect in its initial rollout, it is already making an impact and will continue to improve I assume
Take. The phone. Away.
Has anyone considered just leaving the kids the fuck alone and addressing the real issues?
Frustrated parents? How about the rest of society who has been negatively impacted due to their lack of basic parenting? Getting real tired of everything being dumbed down and made “safe” due to these clown ass parents.
Your lack of ability to effectively parent does not constitute a reduction of personal freedoms on my part.
I like the EU’s idea. Verification and ID. If people don’t like it, they don’t have to use social media. It’s time these platforms have their tobacco moment
All you people blaming parents clearly don’t have kids. It’s not just smartphones – they have iPads or laptops or Chromebooks for school.
I’m very technically proficient and those screen time settings, family safety or family link apps are a pain to get working. Apples is probably the most infuriating.
Sometimes family link straight up doesn’t work.
Screen time will either send you requests for every url if they use Safari, or if they use Chrome, it’ll let them access anything. Also then they can run into issues during school if something they need is restricted.
The only solution that works for me is to talk to my kid AND is at the router level, but now you’re asking every parent to be technical. This is why governments get involved. Social media decays society.
Children trying to raise children lmao. Pathetic.
How many parents actually wanted this law?
I think a lot of angry people here are missing the point. The ban is not meant to be fool proof, it is first and foremost a symbolic measure that responsible parents can rally around to jointly stand up to intentionally addictive and extremely well resourced social media giants.
Secondly it establishes base expectations from those companies and a framework for holding them accountable.
No kids are getting in legal trouble for circumventing the ban, no parents are either. And you all said it yourselves if the ban is so easy to get around then how any of you are “impacted negatively” is a grand mystery.
Also it’s clear nearly none of you are parents yourselves if your answer to this is “just actually parent”.
phones are cheap af, i imagine they’ll just get their own. why does everyone think that being more strict is the perfect solution to every problem
I’m totally against the social media ban. I’m a parent and the government needs to stop being a nanny state. Parents need to parent. Like much of what this government has done, it has been an expensive epic failure which takes a resourceful teen 30 seconds to bypass.