Australian Authoritarianism May be a Reality if the Social Media Ban for Under 16s Kicks Into Effect

Shôn Ellerton, June 27, 2025
The insidious proposal to ban social media for under-16s in Australia may lead Australia into an oppressive digital regime in which every Australian is closely monitored.

I’m reflecting how utterly stupid people in power can be. But, would it be more accurate to reflect how stupid the general public are in voting for them in the first place?

More on that later!

Case in point. I am referring to Australia’s push to bring in a social media ban for anyone under sixteen years of age. If you’re not aware of it, Australia’s Labor Government is making its darndest attempt with yet another political overreach by planning to force social media platforms to block its use for anyone under sixteen.

Anyone who has the slightest ounce of technical knowledge will know that this will never succeed, but still, a bunch of absolute buffoons wanting nothing more than being able to grab as much as power as they can, think they know best for society are still persisting with this nonsense. My American readers, many of whom are wary of my satire, could be thinking that this is a joke. Sadly, and not entirely surprising given Australia’s wowser mentality, this isn’t one of them.

The plan to ban social media for under-16s started last year, however, there has never been any information about how this will be implemented. Naturally, this sparked up the conspiracy that this could lead to a backdoor for the government to identify all users on social media whether they are under sixteen or not.

But is this a conspiracy or a plan?

I believe it is the latter and I’ll explain why.

Great intentions with massive public support but at what cost?

No doubt, most of us with kids would love it if there was an easy way for kids to stem their use of social media and simply do something else. Go outside. Get some exercise. Read a book. And so on.

It’s quite a lazy position to take because it obviates the need for good parenting. Why not let someone in Government make the decision for us what’s right and what’s wrong.

The trouble is this. Most people accept a good idea at surface level rather than delve into the repercussions that this idea might manifest.

Remember the slogan, ‘A dog is not just for Christmas?’

How cute to have a new dog to play with. To cuddle up with. To have four-legged company in the house. But many forget about the potentially expensive vet and kennel costs, the poop and the pee, the extra cleaning in the house, losing interest in the daily ritual of exercise and training, and, of course, the inevitable death of a pet which often proves a traumatic event for most families.

Well, that is just what is happening with respect to this social media ban.

Let’s see.

My kids not watching all those TikTok shorts of shouty twenty-something-year-old boys playing random stupid games. My daughter no longer has to become anorexic to become beautiful. My teenage son’s porn addiction will have to find another outlet. My kids are no longer bullying or being bullied through Instagram.

So, it’s easy to see why this proposal has quite a large amount of support by the public. Most people leap before they think and act out on their emotions rather than explore the ramifications that might occur later.

Unlike the ‘dog is not just for Christmas’ message, the government most certainly won’t be pointing this one out, that’s for sure.

What are the ramifications if the ban succeeds?

Now. Assuming the proposal works and the ban succeeds, which it won’t, what will be the unwanted consequences and ramifications?

For those who think in several shades of grey rather than those who think in black and white, or binary thinkers, the unwanted consequences greatly outweigh the advantages. However, and unfortunately, very few of us think in several shades of grey.

The binary thinkers among us, most of whom would have probably stopped reading this piece some time ago, will assume that most kids are immature, stupid, undisciplined, and would spend all their free time playing online games and chatting on social media.

Sure. Some of them will. But most of them?

I don’t think so.

Binary thinkers may not take into consideration that doing this will exclude all those kids who use social media productively in a positive way. How about those kids who interact with social media to show off their achievements? For example, those who platform their artwork, photographs, music, sports achievements and other works that they are proud of? Why should they be punished because of others who have suffered from the effects of ill-use of social media? Perhaps we should ban alcohol and fast food as well because, surely, there are many who suffer from misusing them.

Give an inch and take a mile

I had quite the debate with a friend of mine who supports this proposal.

He argues that, whether the proposal works or not, it sets out a good example and message.

I replied as to what that message could be but his answer was terribly vague citing that parents will take more responsibility as to what their kids should watch and become more aware of the damage that social media might do to them.

I pointed out that, what he is, in fact, suggesting, is that the government takes control from the parents. I also mentioned that it would set a precedent allowing the government to extend the ban to other areas of the Internet, like video streaming services including YouTube and Rumble.

He replied that it would only affect social media platforms and not video hosting platforms.

Not being entirely trustful of government in general, I wasn’t so sure. If the public has general support of the ban, why not extend it further?

He said that won’t happen and simply doubled down on his position to the point that my wife had to intervene and change the subject.

YouTube now targeted in the ban

Well. Guess what happened?

This month, it was proposed by Julie Inman Grant, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, that YouTube be included in the social media ban!

In the beginning of this piece, I alluded to people in power being stupid. For someone tuning in to watch Julie Grant deliver a speech to ban YouTube, it would be easy to assume that this woman is clearly a stupid ‘Karen’ to raise such a proposal because, surely, it’s not going to work. But assuming so would be wrong and dangerously amiss. This woman, hailing from the United States, held many high-ranked positions in various well-known tech companies including Microsoft, Twitter and Adobe. Stupid people don’t tend to rise to such roles.

Ms Grant is certainly not stupid and knows what she is doing. But unfortunately, it is for an entirely different reason. And this is what makes this proposal so insidious.

Will the social media ban work?

Before we delve into what these insidious intentions are, let’s discuss if the ban will work at all.

I don’t think the proposed social media ban will work. However, it could work but would require a drastic way to do so.

It would require that every ISP hosted in Australia intervene by digitally identifying everyone who uses any of these platforms. Moreover, it may require that every computer have installed a piece of software which is required to access social media platforms. This could even extend to the Internet in general. Essentially, anyone trying to access these platforms will be asked to prove their identities. Probably through the use of image detection through AI combined with the collection of other personal data like birth certificates, passports, and driving licences. This, of course, is open to the massive debate of data gathering of personal and private information.

This is, in fact, what the social media ban proposal is really all about.

Kids, tending to be generally smarter than the parents when it comes to digital technology, will find any number of workarounds. One only needs to look at the way kids in China are circumventing the notorious Great Firewall of China.

We’ll get to the workarounds in a bit.

The other defining factor on how the proposal will fail is that it will utterly scupper some of us who use social media for ‘legitimate’ and business reasons. For example, I’m sure every one of us have encountered those individuals, many of which are in their later years of life, struggle to simply log on to Facebook so that they can see their family member’s posts.

Yet another point to consider is what constitutes a social media platform.

Most of us are aware of the big social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X, and Snapchat, but what about the tens of dozens of other platforms out there, many of which, relatively very few people know about? Look up the list of social media platforms on Wikipedia and you may be surprised at the large set of results. Some of the more well-known ones include Reddit, chess.com, DeviantArt, Quora, Reddit, Nextdoor, Threads, Flickr, 4Chan, Bluesky, Blogger, Discord, Goodreads, Grindr, LinkedIn, and Periscope. Some of these platforms are rather contentious, like 4Chan, but most of them are quite wholesome and legitimate platforms, many of which, specialise in a particular field of interest such as chess.com and Flickr for sharing photographs.

Obviously, it would be impracticable to regulate all these platforms. Those leading this initiative also know that this would be impracticable to implement. It would be foolhardy to suggest that they don’t know about the other platforms, but rest assured, they do!

Interestingly and logically enough, YouTube and its less well-known brethren like Vimeo and Rumble are not social media platforms but rather, video hosting platforms. The proposal by Julie Grant to include YouTube as part of the social media ban is a blatant overreach and is a very worrisome sign of things to come should this ever be put into action.

If, and I really mean, if the ban did come into fruition, it wouldn’t last very long because there would be such an outcry from so many because they can no longer use or understand how to use the platforms they were so used to. Many businesses relying on social media platforms and the Internet, in general, would be at arms as well. But this wouldn’t matter, because, in that short space of time, the government would have scraped and accumulated quite a sizable chunk of personal data from much of the population.

What could be the real motives behind this proposal?

Ultimately, this proposal is bound to be doomed, at least in the long run. The proposal has already cost the Australia taxpayer nearly ten million dollars as of writing and some of the key experts who were initially involved with it have resigned. It was announced that Tim Levy, one of the key experts, was no longer listed on the proposal’s tech trial panel in June 2025. Perhaps, they know something about the actual motives of the proposal that we don’t.

If the motives behind the proposal are centred around creating a system that can track the populace with beady and suspicious eyes, then we may be starting to wander down the path of total surveillance. Couple with AI to mine data from out of our social media feeds and being able to analyse the data and then interpret it as valuable information, could we predict the actions from potential miscreants and felons?

There was a 2002 sci-film dystopian film starring Tom Cruise called Minority Report, which was based on Philip K. Dick’s novella of the same name. Incidentally, Dick’s book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? inspired the blockbuster, Blade Runner. In Minority Report, there are three ‘precogs’ or psychics which are plugged into a central computer. They could, in a way, represent today’s artificial intelligence. The upshot of the story is that they can predict when someone is about to commit a crime. The authorities are alerted and the suspects who haven’t yet committed the crime are arrested.

It’s a tasty story because, on one hand, the world is saved from an actual murder with the potential culprit safely behind bars. I think most of us would prefer that any actual murder doesn’t take place, so having such a system in place could garner enormous support. However, there is no doubt that the system would extend to lesser crimes including political crimes which might include dissenters or activists rebelling against unpopular policies which the government has put into place.

It is certainly not the first time a similar attempt has been made to keep a more watchful eye over the citizenry.

Back in 2020, the Australian government attempted to bring in a law to make it illegal to make any transaction greater than ten thousand dollars in cash illegal. The so-called proposed cash ban, which I wrote about back in 2020, failed for a number of quite obvious reasons which I pointed out in the piece. The intention, of course, is to ensure that everyone’s financial transactions are tracked eventually leading to a digital cashless society.

More recently, this overreach of power reeks of the excessive power used during COVID-19 in the form of so-called emergency powers in which it was proposed that everyone keeps a digital COVID app on their phones. This, likewise, was fraught with technical difficulties and failed.

Why is there so much government overreach in Australia?

We have to start with the Australian mentality.

Much like the British, the Australians seem, in general, to be happy to be led by those in government. Most of the other Australians don’t bother with anything to do with politics, so they’re not heard until it’s too late. And when it’s too late, the British mindset of ‘mustn’t grumble’ and ‘let’s not fuss about it’ kicks in. This leaves only a very small contingency of the Australian population who actively speak out against outrageously overreaching proposals like this one. And when they do, they are often ostracised by the majority.

It’s odd when the topic of Trump and his so-called authoritarianism is brought up on numerous occasions by many Australians when, right at their doorstep, sits a government with far more control over its citizens. This social media ban could never occur in the United States as its people could never accept it. They are protected by a Bill of Rights whereas Australia and the UK are not. Even during COVID, Australians were not allowed passage back home when they were caught being overseas during the shutout period. In the UK, people are being sent to prison for saying something ‘hurtful’ on social media. I would also mention that more people, as a percentage, are being deported and denied entrance to Australia than the United States.

The combination of the passive aggressive Australian and UK mindset coupled with the lack of basic citizen protections makes a rife playing field for breeding authoritarianism. The 2005 film, V for Vendetta, is a good reproduction of what such a society could be like in Australia and the UK.

Ms Julie Grant, an American, knows full well that such a proposal could never come into being in the United States, but here she is in Australia. The perfect place to execute such a trial with its sheeplike population.

What are the workarounds if the social media ban came into being?

Lastly, what are the workarounds if this social media ban came into effect scheduled for December 2025?

Kids, being generally, tech savvy, will probably find any number of workarounds, much of which will remain a total mystery to most parents.

Even now, many kids are aware of how VPNs work. Many also register their accounts through VPNs giving addresses based in the United States or elsewhere rather than Australia. They lie about their age half their time. Look at the Discord social media platform where the minimum age, set by themselves, is thirteen. It’s easy to change one’s birthdate.

Many kids also have Google accounts, many of which are set by their parents as a means for them to access photos, learning material, emails and a place to hold their contacts information. YouTube, which is tied closely to Google, is a vast repository of educational content as well as those annoying and useless YouTube Shorts which came into being not many years ago.

Is it even possible to block all Australian ISPs from using VPNs? I’m not entirely sure. Take China, for example. Technically, it is illegal to use VPNs but yet, given all this time China has been blocking many Western services, there are many who use VPNs to access them.

I would not be half surprised if this initiative includes a proposal to ensure that all Australians accessing the Internet are required to have a piece of software embedded in their computers which monitors their use, including the use of VPNs and other smart DNS proxy software. This is genuinely worrying but most of the population with no tech savvy will just suck it up willingly.

Lastly, we have approached the age of cheap satellite Internet thanks to Musk’s prodigious work with Starlink. Not being tied to sovereignty, this could be the last bastion of true and free Internet unshackled from the demons of government control.