As governments expand social media bans for kids, a growing body of evidence suggests that removing accounts does not automatically translate into safer online experiences. Policymakers are advancing age-based restrictions while overlooking the systems and design choices that drive harm.
France moved in January to bar under-15s from social networks. Australia followed with an under-16 ban that led platforms to restrict access to 4.7 million accounts, according to the national eSafety Commissioner. Yet two months later, a parental-control firm reported that one in five Australian teens under 16 was still on TikTok and Snapchat. The question remains whether bans alone make children safer.
Other governments are moving in the same direction. Indonesia’s child-safety framework, in force since March, blocks under-16s from opening accounts on designated high-risk platforms. The United Kingdom has outlined plans to prohibit social media for under-16s, add default overnight curfews for 16- and 17-year-olds, and bring risky AI features under child-safety rules. On 17 September, the European Commission proposed the EU KIDS Act, which would forbid under-13s from social media, set 15 as the EU-wide minimum age for independently opening an account, and require platforms to demonstrate that services are age appropriate and safe by design.
Specialists working on Child Online Protection initiatives with the International Telecommunication Union say these measures do not address root causes. The primary drivers of risk include recommender algorithms, engagement-optimized interfaces, opaque moderation, and data-extractive business models.
Social media bans for kids do not equal safety
Three recurring constraints limit policy effectiveness.
First, many public institutions tasked with child online protection lack the staffing, funding, or technical capacity to enforce complex rules. A 2026 UNICEF evaluation of Indonesia cited capacity gaps among service providers, uncertain long-term funding, and a need for specialized personnel. Local offices sometimes lacked digital skills, and budget pressures led to reliance on external support.
Second, gaps in digital literacy leave many children and parents without the skills to manage online risks. Policy research published in Digital Society this year on Indonesia found that account removals do not close fundamental knowledge gaps. Large numbers of children lacked guidance on safe navigation and did not know how to report harmful experiences.
Third, platforms operate with limited independent oversight of how they detect underage users, build age checks, and report compliance. In Indonesia, companies conduct age verification while the Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs supervises. TikTok’s appeals process for users flagged as underage can require a government ID and selfies, raising concerns about the handling of additional personal data. It is unclear whether regulators can ensure that such data is managed responsibly.
The privacy paradox of proving age
Age-based restrictions create a technical challenge: verifying a user’s age accurately while minimizing data collection. Common approaches include identity documents, parental authorization, app-store checks, and facial age estimation, each with trade-offs in accuracy, privacy, accessibility, and resistance to evasion.
Facial age estimation relies on large datasets but remains probabilistic and has misclassified both children and adults. The goal should be to confirm that a user meets an age threshold without disclosing identity, date of birth, or other data that could fuel profiling. The European Commission’s verification blueprint asks companies to adopt methods that avoid collecting unnecessary information.
Privacy-preserving technologies could help. Zero-Knowledge Proofs can attest that a user is above a threshold without revealing identity or exact birth date. W3C Verifiable Credentials allow cryptographically verifiable claims such as “over 16,” while device-based signals can share age ranges without precise dates. These tools still require rigorous security testing, common standards, independent oversight, and strict data-retention limits to avoid creating permanent, business-controlled identity infrastructures.
Where connection goes when a platform closes
Restricting access often redirects young users in unpredictable ways. Early anecdotes in Australia suggested migration to smaller, less regulated services such as Yope, a pattern researchers have described as regulatory whack-a-mole. Industry data two months later showed no broad shift, aside from a modest uptick in WhatsApp, and many teens remained on banned platforms through workarounds.
This reveals a wider societal issue: the decline of youth “third places,” the physical environments where young people socialize outside home and school. As these spaces shrink, commercial platforms substitute for social connection. For isolated, marginalized, disabled, or LGBTQ+ youth, losing online communities can mean losing crucial support or moving to spaces with weaker oversight.
How to design safer online systems for children
If blanket prohibitions are insufficient, regulators and companies can focus on design and accountability. Platforms have introduced features that concentrate attention and increase exposure to risks, including hyper-optimized recommendations, intrusive data collection, limited controls on unwanted contact, infinite scroll, autoplay, streaks, and persistent notifications.
These patterns face intensifying scrutiny, including under the European Union’s Digital Services Act. A 2026 study by the 5Rights Foundation that tracked children’s device use minute by minute found that interface choices directly shape attention, sleep, and well-being.
More durable protections would regulate user interfaces and treat children as valid users whose privacy and agency require safeguards at the outset. Examples include high-privacy defaults for minors, such as private accounts and location sharing turned off, and recommender systems that disclose the main factors shaping feeds while giving young people meaningful control over personalization. The European Commission has released guidance on age-appropriate interaction that limits unsolicited contact and blocks adding minors to groups without consent. Rules could also disable or limit engagement-maximizing features by default for young users, such as autoplay, infinite scroll, streaks, read receipts, and push notifications.
Governments should set measurable outcomes and fund independent evaluations. Platforms should provide researchers with meaningful data access, and engineers should audit age-assurance systems for bias and data leakage. Schools, parents, and young people should participate in designing the technologies intended to protect them.
If policymakers remove a key infrastructure for youth connection, they should offer stronger alternatives. Social media bans for kids may reduce some exposures and could be justified for certain ages, services, or risks. They are one tool, not a substitute for safer design, accountable platforms, digital literacy, institutional capacity, and noncommercial digital third places such as moderated communities, creative spaces, and public-interest platforms centered on youth participation rather than profit.
Early restrictions are unlikely to keep children safe on their own. Authorities are counting what is easiest to measure, such as account removals, while paying less attention to harder outcomes like access to safe third places and meaningful connection on and offline. Until evidence shows that harm has actually declined, account removal will continue to be mistaken for safety.