Across the globe, social media bans for people under the age of 16 are becoming more common. Australia implemented a ban that began in December of 2025, and Indonesia’s ban took effect in March of this year. The goal of these bans is simple: to protect children from addictive, harmful social media algorithms.

While straightforward in theory, these bans are much more complicated in practice. Currently, TikTok, YouTube and Reddit have policies that bar people under the age of 13 from using their platforms, but younger children often ignore these rules and create accounts anyway. The same problem is affecting countries that have banned social media for those under 16; teenagers are continuing to use social media, disregarding the law. As a result, countries are placing the blame on social media companies for failing to ensure that people follow the rules.

However, putting the burden on social media companies to enforce the social media age restrictions shifts too much power away from the government and into the hands of private companies. Fining companies heavily for people not complying and forcing them to implement age-verification steps might seem to promote corporate accountability, but these policies actually open the doors for companies to collect more data about young non-users. If social media companies have to verify identities using government IDs or AI-assisted image recognition, a vast amount of sensitive data will be collected from minors, potentially putting their online safety at risk and exposing them to possible identity theft.

Additionally, these governments are overestimating how much control these companies have over their users. It is difficult for any one company to perfectly make sure all of its users are following the rules, especially without tracking every single aspect of their lives. Therefore, Australia and Indonesia’s insistence that social media companies be held responsible for users’ actions ignores the root of the problem surrounding teenagers and social media — that many people continue to use it because they are unaware of its risks.

Placing a blanket ban on social media for people under 16 simply makes using it another form of teenage rebellion and the desire to be “cool.” Instead of unwittingly encouraging social media use as a representation of freedom, it might be more useful for companies to implement education about the dangers of social media, including its potential to be addictive and dangerous, particularly for minors.

Thus, in order to truly protect children from social media, education is key. Arbitrary policies don’t help people understand reasoning, but teaching them the rationale behind certain perspectives might help create a society that is much more cognizant of social media’s drawbacks.