- Australia banned social media for the mental health of children.
- A new survey exposed the ineffectiveness of this ban.
- In the survey, 85% children are still using social media.
- Kids bypass restrictions with fake accounts, private browsing.
Social Media Ban For Kids: Australia was the first in the world to ban social media for children under 16 years of age. After this, UK and UAE have also passed such laws and banned the use of social media by children below 16 years of age. Now a survey has exposed Australia’s law. It has come to light that banning social media does not seem to have any significant effect and children are still using social media as before.
The law came last year
Australia passed a law locking social media in December last year. After this, there was a ban on creating accounts for children on platforms like TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, X and Snapchat etc. This law was brought to prevent the bad effects of social media on the mental health of children.
The reality revealed in the survey
A study published in a medical journal named The BMJ has revealed the truth about the impact of this law. Two surveys were conducted to know the impact of this law. The first survey of more than 400 teenagers aged 12-17 years was conducted before the implementation of the law, while the second survey was conducted three months after the implementation of the law. In these, questions were asked related to the use of social media, time spent on social media daily, methods of accessing the account and age-verification. In the second survey, they were also asked whether they had used any other methods to avoid the ban.
Most children are using social media
The results of the survey show that this experiment of Australia has not proved successful. About 85 percent of children under 16 years of age are still using social media platforms. He also said that he is accessing these platforms from his own account instead of someone else’s. However, two-thirds of teenagers said that they had to verify their age. For this they are asked to upload date of birth or selfie. Despite this, teenagers have come up with such tricks due to which the ban is not having any effect. Many teenagers included in the survey said that they have created fake accounts and many are avoiding the ban through private browsing.
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