Australia leader defends social media ban as teens brag about staying online

By Byron ‌Kaye

SYDNEY, Dec 11 (Reuters) - Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese acknowledged some young people were still on social media a day ‍after a ‌world-first ban on under-16s went live, saying the rollout was always going to be bumpy but would ultimately save lives.

A day ⁠after the law took effect, Australian social media feeds were ‌flooded with comments from people claiming to be under 16, including one on the prime minister's TikTok account saying "I'm still here, wait until I can vote".

Under the law, 10 of the biggest platforms including TikTok, Meta's Instagram and Alphabet's YouTube must bar underage users or face a fine ⁠of up to A$49.5 million ($33 million). The government has said previously that it would take some time for the platforms to set up processes to do ​this.

"Of course it isn't smooth," Albanese told Melbourne radio station FOX.

"You can't in ‌one day switch off over a million accounts across the ⁠board. But it is happening."

On Nova Radio in Sydney, Albanese added: "If it was easy, someone else would have done it."

Governments around the world have said they would monitor the Australian rollout as they weigh whether to do something similar. U.S. ​Republican senator Josh Hawley endorsed the ban as it took effect, Nine newspapers reported.

The United Nations childrens agency UNICEF warned in a statement the ban might encourage children to visit less regulated parts of the internet and could not work alone.

"Laws introducing age restrictions are not an alternative to companies improving platform design and content moderation," the statement said.

Albanese has pitched the ​ban as an ‍intervention to protect young people from ​mental health risks associated with social media, including bullying, body image problems and addictive algorithms.

The measure would "save lives and it will change lives for this and future generations", he told Nova.

Australian searches for virtual private networks (VPNs), which can mask an internet user's location, surged to the highest in about 10 years in the week before the ban took effect, according to publicly available Google data.

Free VPN provider hide.me told Reuters it experienced a 65% spike in visits from Australia in the days before the ban kicked in, ⁠although that had not translated to a rising number of downloads.

All 10 platforms named by the ban opposed it before saying they would comply. As the ban took effect, some ​platforms not covered by the ban rose to the top of app download charts, prompting the Australian government to say the platform list was "dynamic".

One app, Lemon8, which is owned by TikTok parent Bytedance, introduced an age minimum of 16. Photo-sharing app Yope told Reuters it had experienced "very fast growth" to about 100,000 Australian users. About half its ‌users were over 16.

The company told Reuters it had told the Australian internet regulator overseeing the rollout that it considered itself a private messaging service, not social media.

($1 = 1.4995 Australian dollars)

(Reporting by Byron Kaye; Additional reporting by Alasdair Pal; Editing by Stephen Coates)