Both Australia and Indonesia have recently prohibited children from using social media, and a new round of such restrictions is on the horizon. The U.K. is working on banning the platforms for 2027, while the European Union has taken a somewhat different course, prohibiting platforms for children under 13 and personal accounts for people under 15.
Now the issue is not whether these prohibitions succeed. The real question is whether anyone is keeping an eye on them to find out.
Australia’s Early Results
Early findings from Australia suggest the ban is not working as intended, even though that country became the first to ban social media for people under 16. Indonesia followed quickly with its own action.
The British Medical Journal published an evaluation that found scant proof of notable drops in social media use three months after the ban. Many young people went on using restricted platforms and found ways around age-verification systems. At the same time, Australia’s online watchdog found that more than 80% of children were still using a restricted online platform.
Leonardo Bursztyn, a behavioral economist, and his team discovered that numerous teenagers persisted in thinking their peers were still using restricted platforms, and said they would be more willing to stop if more of their peers followed suit. This underscores the strong role that peer influence plays in how adolescents make decisions.
The U.K. Plan
One of the largest funders of mental health research in the world, the London-based philanthropic foundation Wellcome, is backing studies of the effect of the U.K.’s planned social media ban on young people’s mental health. The ban is expected to be introduced in spring 2027.
The study brings together teams working with tens of thousands of teenagers. Every part of the research is guided by young people with experience in both social media use and mental health problems.
Young People’s View
The U.K. study’s young participants turned the entire discussion on its head. Rather than ask whether social media is harmful, they considered what it currently offers them, and what could step in to take its place if access is cut off.
Teenagers are fully aware of the risks that come with social media, things like misinformation and harmful content. They see it as a tool for learning, connection, support, creativity, and a sense of belonging. They pointed out that assessing the controls needs to take into account how teenagers actually spend their time.
Researchers were told to see if young people are spending their time constructively — nurturing outdoor hobbies, building friendships, sleeping better, and studying more — or merely being bored, or ending up in unregulated online spaces.
What Researchers Are Watching
The evidence increasingly suggests that there is unlikely to be a single “social media effect” that impacts all teenagers in the same way. Restrictions will likely affect individual young people differently, based on factors such as age, existing mental health problems, and sleep patterns.
It may also depend on a person’s gender, their family income, or whether they live in an urban or rural area. Social media can provide a source of community, and so restrictions might affect people from marginalized backgrounds in different ways, including those who identify as LGBTQ+.
The Evaluation Roadmap
| Stage | Focus |
|---|---|
| Australia | Early findings on implementation and use |
| Indonesia | No reported findings given |
| U.K. | Ongoing design, with research teams to work with tens of thousands of teenagers |
A Global Opportunity
Our aim is not merely to test whether the bans actually work. Rather, we want to study the impact on young people when their digital environments shift, and to grasp the reasons behind it.
Young people who use social media and understand mental health problems guide the U.K. evaluation. This is a sensible way to approach the work.
The question is whether anyone can answer it.
“the difficulties in implementing the ban in australia mean that it is still too early to say whether it has improved young people’s mental health and in what ways it has worked.”
Source material: “Opinion: Social media bans are passing around the world. How will we know if they help teens?,” STAT.
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