Friday | 12nd December 2025
Brisbane, Australia — Fourteen-year-old cheerleader Lucy Brooks briefly lost contact with several of her friends on Snapchat when Australia’s new under-16 social media ban came into force on Wednesday. For a moment, she feared the ban had permanently cut off a core part of teenage communication. But within 24 hours, most of her friends had reappeared online. Many had simply created new accounts, while others were using the faces of parents or older friends—borrowed with permission—to fool age-verification tools designed to keep minors off the platforms.
Australia’s sweeping new law, billed as the most stringent of its kind in the world, blocks anyone under 16 from using 10 major platforms, including Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram—apps that form the backbone of teenage social life. Critics had predicted that minors would quickly migrate to alternative platforms. What they perhaps underestimated was how easily teenagers would return to the same apps, armed with digital tricks similar to those that teens in the United Kingdom used after the rollout of the Online Safety Act earlier this year.
“A lot of the time it was with the parents’ knowledge,” Lucy said, explaining how common it had become for her peers to sidestep the restrictions. “But people are also using AI-generated pictures—like getting AI to make a 40-year-old person—just to get past the checks.” Lucy herself lost access to Instagram, but she remains active on Snapchat and TikTok through a workaround.
Age-verification companies insist their systems can still detect when a minor is using an account, even if the initial screening is bypassed. Whether these “shadow accounts” will eventually be purged remains uncertain. For now, though, teenagers determined to remain online appear to have little trouble doing so—especially those whose parents don’t oppose their return.
‘Getting phone numbers is annoying’
To mark the launch of the ban, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese hosted a quintessential Australian barbecue on the front lawns of his Sydney residence. Among the guests were parents whose children had died by suicide following cyberbullying, as well as advocates who had campaigned for years to restore a sense of safety and innocence to childhood. That evening, the Sydney Harbour Bridge shone in green and gold, illuminated with the campaign message: “Let Them Be Kids.”
Yet just below the bridge, a group of four 15-year-old boys taking a break from riding their bikes told CNN they hadn’t lost their accounts at all.
“I think it’s because I put my birth year as 2000 when I first signed up,” one boy laughed, as his friends nodded knowingly. “It’s just easier.”
“I wouldn’t care if I lost TikTok,” another boy added. “But I don’t want to lose Snapchat.” For him, Snapchat is essential—not for entertainment, but for communication. “Getting actual phone numbers is annoying,” he explained when asked if WhatsApp or iMessage could replace it.
Another boy chimed in, saying Instagram is his main source of news. Traditional media barely registers in his life. “Sometimes I get Channel Nine in my feed,” he said, referring to the Australian TV network. The interview ended with the boys playfully teasing a friend who admitted he sometimes reads printed newspapers. “No way, mate!” they laughed.
‘He didn’t even try to bypass it’
Leo Puglisi, founder of the online youth news outlet 6 News, is now 18 and strongly opposed to the ban. He doubts it will prevent teens from accessing social platforms.
“I know it’s not working,” Puglisi told CNN. “My brother is under 16, and he’s still on social media right now. He didn’t even try to bypass it.”
Puglisi launched 6 News when he was 11 years old. Today, he leads a small team of young reporters balancing schoolwork with breaking stories. He insists that if the ban had existed when he began, his entire career path might never have started.
“We have to remember: we’re talking about 15-year-olds—not 5-year-olds. A 15-year-old can have a part-time job. I think they should be allowed to log into YouTube.”
Sixteen-year-old entrepreneur Lucas Lane shares that concern. He started his business, Glossy Boys, at age 13 after noticing the lack of black nail polish at his local pharmacy. Today, he sells “skate-proof” nail polish primarily through Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.
“This ban is going to impact my business—and the community,” he said. “I want people to be unique, to be themselves. I’m afraid the government and social media companies aren’t letting that happen.”
He believes the answer lies in education and safety measures—not outright prohibition.
Two legal challenges have already hit Australia’s High Court, including a major filing from Reddit, which argues the law raises “serious privacy and political expression issues.” While Reddit says it is complying with the law for now, the case could shape how far governments can go in regulating youth access online.
‘It’s scary and nerve-wracking’
On TikTok, some users joked that without social media they’d resort to mischief, while others suggested jumping to alternative apps like Yope or Coverstar, the latter marketed as a safer TikTok with “No DMs. No Creeps.”
Lemon8, once seen as a likely refuge, is now restricted to users over 16.
Fifteen-year-old aspiring singer Shar had urged friends to follow her there, fearing she’d lose all 4,000 of her TikTok followers overnight. But the feared purge never came.
“None of my accounts have been shut down—not even the ones with my real age,” she said. “I don’t know anyone my age who lost theirs. I’m pretty surprised, because they made such a big deal about it.”
Still, for Lucy and many others, anxiety is rising. She says some friends tried downloading their account data but lacked phone storage. They now fear their private messages and photos could be locked away for years in some digital vault, inaccessible but preserved indefinitely.
“It’s scary and nerve-wracking,” Lucy admitted. “People don’t know what to do.”
Her friends exchanged phone numbers just in case—but so far, they haven’t needed them.
Lucy hopes to hold onto Instagram, partly because her cheerleading photos often appear on team accounts and she wants to monitor how she’s portrayed. She also follows other cheerleading groups for inspiration and training ideas.
She agrees that children need protection from harmful content, but she doubts the ban will work.
“I actually want it to work,” she said. “Kids shouldn’t be on social media that much.”
Then, after a pause, she added quietly, “But I don’t think it will.”
Instead, she believes reasonable time limits—“one to two hours a day”—would be far more effective.
