Good morning. Australia just became the first country in the world to ban social media for children under 16 – more on that below, along with Health Canada’s new pill for postpartum depression and Donald Trump’s harsh words for Europe. But first:
Today’s headlines
- Air Transat reaches a deal to avoid a pilot strike
- Canada’s ambassador to U.S. will leave her post in the new year
- Ukrainian soldiers see little hope in peace talks or on the front line
- Ottawa seeks to toughen laws on gender-based violence
Sorry, kids in Sydney: No Snapchat for you.Rick Rycroft/The Associated Press
Technology
A ban down under
The clock struck midnight in Australia and five million kids lost access to their social media accounts. No Snapchat, no TikTok, no YouTube, no Facebook, no Instagram, X, Reddit or Twitch – a landmark new law just kicked every Australian under 16 off basically any platform they might want to use. It’s the world’s first-ever social-media ban for children, designed to protect them from online bullies, toxic peer pressure and the addictive algorithms hijacking their brains.
Australian politicians acknowledged the rollout is bound to have its hiccups. “We may be building the plane a little bit as we’re flying it,” Julie Inman Grant, the country’s online safety regulator, said in a national address in June.
But the law, which passed a year ago with bipartisan support, has broad popularity across the country – except, that is, among young people. In a large-scale survey of 9- to 15-year-olds by Australia’s public broadcaster, just 9 per cent say the ban is a good idea, while three-quarters plan to keep using social media anyway. They have plenty of time to find a workaround: It’s nearly summer vacation in the southern hemisphere and kids will be home from school for weeks.
Skirting the law
I’ll wager that you or a parent you know read Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, which leans on all sorts of studies to indict smartphones for causing a mental health epidemic among teens. (It’s sold almost two million copies worldwide.) Annabel West, the wife of South Australia premier Peter Malinauskas, devoured it last year. “She put the book down and said to me, ‘You better bloody do something about this,’” Malinauskas told a reporter in October. “And then we got to work.”
The national law puts the burden squarely on tech companies to keep kids under 16 off their platforms, including through ID checks and AI-powered face scans that analyze bone structure and skin texture to guess somebody’s age. It’s not a perfect science, and Australian Reddit is now lousy with tips on beating the AI tool. There’s a mesh face mask for sale on Temu that apparently does the trick. Recruiting random adults can also help, though any teen who’s loitered outside a liquor store already knew that.
Ninety-five per cent of 13- to 15-year-olds in Australia used social media last year.STR/AFP/Getty Images
To access this Reddit advice, kids could try a virtual private network, or VPN, to hide their location and make platforms think they’re logging on from outside Australia. It’s a strategy used to get around Britain’s Online Safety Act, which requires services such as porn sites to start checking user age. Days after the bill passed in July, five of the top 10 free apps in Apple’s store were for VPN services, and one app maker saw an 1,800-per-cent surge in downloads.
Still, tech companies, when sufficiently motivated, are able to crack down on these workarounds. Australia’s eSafety czar Inman Grant points out that Netflix is particularly deft at catching VPNs.
Paying the price
That’s where the fines come in. It’s not kids, or their parents, who will be penalized for circumventing Australia’s social-media ban. Instead, platforms must cough up AUS$50-million (roughly $46-million) if they don’t take reasonable steps to keep underaged users off their sites.
All 10 companies covered by the new law ultimately agreed to comply – including, at the absolute last minute, Elon Musk’s X – and Inman Grant expects they’ll make good on their promise. They may have been dragged into it “kicking and screaming,” she said this morning, “but now it is time for them to show us their stuff.”
So it’s strong words for Big Tech, and a bit of semantics for those who just lost their social media access: Rather than a ban, government officials insist on calling it a delay, one that gives kids more time to grow up before they confront the algorithms’ many temptations. I’m embarrassed to admit I checked social media about 9,000 times while trying to write this newsletter. Maybe Australia’s young people will find they end up enjoying the reprieve.
The Shot
‘It’s challenging to take care of the little boy.’
Ten-year-old Akem Akuot feeds her three-year-old brother in Bor, South Sudan.Janice Dickson/The Globe and Mail
As foreign aid dries up, so do South Sudan’s hopes of ending its hunger crisis. Read more from The Globe’s Janice Dickson about the sweeping costs of the funding cuts.
The Wrap
What else we’re following
At home: The NDP rejected author Yves Engler as a leadership candidate, citing concerns he had intimidated elected officials and echoed Russian state propaganda.
Abroad: U.S. President Donald Trump slammed Europe as “weak” and “so politically correct” and said Moscow had the “upper hand” in the war in Ukraine.
Pill: Health Canada has approved the first drug to treat postpartum depression, which could be available early next year.
Pool: Olympian Penny Oleksiak said a handful of administrative errors – and not failed drug tests – led to her two-year ban from swimming competitions.
Good game: The Globe’s Cathal Kelly and Paul Attfield will answer your questions at 1 p.m. ET today about Canada’s World Cup chances.
Good boys: Buenos Aires just broke Vancouver’s world record for the largest gathering of golden retrievers – 2,397 of them, many in their finest attire.