How to Alienate a Generation

Why the Under‑16 Social Media Ban is seriously getting on my goat

Waking Up Angry, and With Good Reason

I’m writing this in the early morning for once, not at stupid‑o’clock when my brain has already melted. Today it’s working, mostly because I’m pissed off.

In six days (at the time of writing, the 4th of December), the under‑16 social media ban kicks in. The big eSafety “solution.” The thing I’ve been yelling about for months. It’s finally about to land, and, surprise, it’s already causing problems no one in government bothered to think through.

This was a dumb idea from the start. Nobody did their due diligence. Nobody asked basic questions like:

• What about kids who run businesses?

• What about youth groups and clubs?

• What about political speech?

• What about where the kids go instead?

They just saw a headline: “We banned kids from social media, look how much we care.” And that was enough.

Two 15‑year‑olds have already taken this to the High Court, arguing it’s unconstitutional because it cuts them off from political communication. They’re right. The internet is where young people discuss politics, organise, and form opinions. These kids will be voting in a few years. Silencing them now isn’t “safety”; it’s just an overglorified way to censor the youth under the guise of safety, even though that is most likely not their intention.

I genuinely don’t know how this government thinks it’s going to get re‑elected by a generation it just kicked off the internet.

And before anyone says it: no, I don’t like the other mob either. The majors in Australia are a joke (you can tell I am angry at this).

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Crushing Young Creators and Entrepreneurs

One of the most depressing parts of this ban is how it steamrolls kids who are actually doing something good online.

Take “Johnny’s Pitstop”. He sells gummies. He’s built a little brand, uses social media to market his stuff, and he’s actually doing well. People on the Gold Coast are talking about him in comment sections. He’s hustling, learning, growing, being exactly the kind of enterprising kid everyone pretends to want more of.

And now, because of this ban, his entire operation is at risk.

No Instagram. No TikTok. No direct access to the audience he worked hard to build. He doesn’t have a marketing budget or a PR agency or billboards. He has a phone and an account. That’s it.

The government’s “solution” to online harms is to yank that away and call it child protection.

The same goes for the kids in my church community. We’re putting on a festival day where a bunch of the stalls are run by kids, deliberately. We want to foster business skills and confidence in a safe, loving environment. Give them a taste of entrepreneurship without throwing them to the wolves.

You know what makes that easier? Social media. Letting them promote their stalls, share what they’re making, and feel proud of the work they’re doing.

You know what makes it harder? A blanket ban that says:

“Sorry, you’re 15. You’re apparently not capable of posting about your handmade cookies without the entire internet collapsing.”

It’s infantilising. It punishes the driven kids right along with the doomscrollers.

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Collateral Damage: Youth Groups, Teams, and the “Touch Grass” Crowd

Here’s the part that really fries my brain.

The Commissioner keeps telling kids they need to get off screens and “go outside, join clubs, connect in the real world”, touch grass, basically.

Cool. I agree with that in theory.

But you know what a ridiculous number of those “touch grass” activities use to reach kids?

Instagram. TikTok. Social media.

• Church youth groups

• Cheerleading squads

• Dance schools

• Local football/netball clubs

• Support groups, youth outreach, community centres

They’re all using Instagram and similar platforms as their main communication channel with young people. Not to farm them for data; just to say, “Hey, youth group is on Friday at 7,” or “Here’s the registration link for camp,” or “Here’s what we did last week, come join us.”

I’ve had real community groups come to me and ask:

“How are we meant to reach our youth if they’re not allowed to be on Instagram anymore?”

And honestly? I don’t have a good answer for them.

We’ve spent ten years moving everything onto social media:

• Event reminders

• Group chats

• Announcement posts

• Quick check‑ins: “Hey, you okay? You haven’t turned up in a while.”

Now the message to under‑16s is:

“You should absolutely join a healthy real‑world community…
but also you’re banned from the place where those communities actually invite you.”

A church youth group can’t promote next Friday’s hangout to the actual teens on their Insta stories. A cheer squad can’t post training times where their under‑16 members will see them. A volunteer‑run outreach group can’t DM a struggling kid to say, “We’re here if you need us,” without stumbling into legal grey zones.

These are exactly the kinds of activities the Commissioner claims kids should be doing instead of scrolling. Community. Sport. Faith. Arts. Offline connection.

And we’ve just knee‑capped the communication tools that fill those rooms with kids.

The government keeps saying this is about protecting young people, but once again it’s the people doing the right thing, volunteers, youth leaders, coaches, kids who actually show up, who get caught in the blast radius.

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Unintended Consequences: Driving Kids to Worse Corners of the Internet

Here’s the bit the geniuses in charge don’t seem to get: kids aren’t going to just vanish from the internet because you banned them from the big-name platforms.

They’re going to move.

They already are. Under‑16s are quietly migrating to smaller, less regulated platforms that aren’t (yet) on the banned list. That might be some new app you’ve never heard of, or DMs on a gaming platform, or random niche sites with almost no moderation.

The ban didn’t stop kids using social media. It just:

• Pushed them to worse platforms, and

• Made their presence feel illegal, so they won’t talk about it.

From a safety perspective, that’s a disaster.

At least on the big platforms:

• There are moderation teams (however flawed).

• There are reporting tools.

• There are content rules and some level of scrutiny.

Smaller platforms often have:

• Minimal moderation

• Fewer safety features

• Less scrutiny

• More room for creeps and bad actors to operate quietly

Now imagine a 14‑year‑old being cyberbullied on one of these smaller apps.
Do you really think they’re going to go to Mum or Dad and say:

“Hey, I’m being bullied on [random app], also by the way I’m not supposed to be on there because the government banned me from social media”?

Of course not.

They’ll just silently cop it, because asking for help now also means confessing to “doing the wrong thing.” The law has effectively turned underage social media use into something that feels criminal, even when what they’re doing is just trying to talk to their friends.

We’re not stopping cyberbullying or predatory behaviour. We’re just:

• Pushing it into the shadows, and

• Making it harder for kids to ask for help.

It’s bull.

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The Government That Just Doesn’t Get It

I don’t think this government has any idea what it’s doing, not in a macro way, not in a micro way.

I hang out with people all over the political spectrum: far left, far right, and everything in between. And somehow, miraculously, this lot has united all of them… in hating this policy.

They’re not “keeping the peace”. They’re not balancing rights and harms. They’re just flailing around in the dark, throwing poorly thought-through laws at complex problems and hoping the optics carry them through to the next election.

Meanwhile, tech is evolving faster than they can hold a press conference.

We’ve got:

• AI‑generated photos and videos that look more real than reality

• Algorithmic feeds that shape kids’ worldviews

• Data harvesting on a scale no one fully grasps

And what do they do?
Over‑correct on social media, and quietly shrug at almost everything else. It’s like locking all the kids out of the library because one book was dodgy, while leaving the minefield outside completely untouched.

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Taxpayer Money to Burn, and Basic Systems Failing

Now let’s talk about why this all feels extra insulting: we’re paying for this circus.

Recently, it came out that a senior minister involved in this whole communications/online safety space took a trip to New York for a conference. Great, fine, whatever, except the total cost was hovering around $90,000 for flights alone for three people. Then stack on hotel costs, meals, Ubers, the whole package. We’re talking exorbitant amounts of taxpayer money.

That’s our money.

I sit here as a small business owner being taxed to oblivion, and somehow, there’s always cash for luxury travel and PR tours. They lecture us on responsibility while burning through more in a week than some families see in a year.

And then there’s the ATO side quest from hell.

This week I discovered my tax payment plan was about to be screwed because the ATO did a system update… that deleted my card on file.

No email. No text. No “hey, by the way, your payment method’s been wiped, maybe log in and fix that so you don’t get smashed with penalties.”

Just a hidden notice on the website itself:

“This card is unusable due to a system update.”

If I hadn’t checked, my payments would’ve failed, my plan would’ve defaulted, and I’d be slapped with extra interest or penalties for not paying on time, all because their system nuked my details.

And of course, logging in to fix it was its own special pain. Half the time the site’s broken. Pages don’t load. Random errors pop up. Every time I deal with anything government‑tech related, something is down, glitching, or just badly designed. If you watch my stories on Instagram, you’re well aware of the ongoing joke about this at this point.

We can’t get basic systems like the ATO website working reliably (or at the very least, get a reasonable site that doesn’t cost $96 million, looking at you BOM).
But sure, let’s launch a massive, never‑before‑done national age verification regime for every major platform on the internet. What could possibly go wrong.

Meanwhile, I’m taxed on:

• Every transaction (hello, 10% GST)

• My personal income (30–40% depending on bracket)

• The business profit itself (company tax, around 30%)

• Superannuation contributions (which also get taxed, with admin fees)

• And then there are admin fees and assorted extras nibbling at whatever’s left

By the time the government’s done, I feel like I’m losing 80% of every $100 that comes in one way or another. And for what? So someone can go on a $90k jaunt to New York and push half‑baked laws that make my life harder and don’t even work properly?

If you’re an employee in a small business, genuinely: respect your boss. You have no idea how much bureaucratic bullsh*t they wade through just to pay you. Forms, portals, rules that change mid‑stream, deadlines, penalties, it never ends. We’re the ones jumping through hoops while the people writing the rules are busy racking up frequent flyer points.

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ID Checks and Privacy Nightmares

Back to the ban.

To kick under‑16s off social media, platforms need to know who’s under 16. So we end up in age verification hell.

Your “choices” look something like:

• Hand over ID or bank details to prove your age

• Get your face scanned by some AI system

• Use a third‑party age verification service that now sits between you and the platform

Cool. Great. Nothing could possibly go wrong there.

I know they say they’re not storing your data. I know they say it’ll all be deleted. I also know how this game works. Data has a funny way of sticking around. Policies change. Breaches happen. “Temporary” databases become “legacy” databases that never quite get wiped.

And facial recognition? Don’t even get me started. The idea that you have to upload your face to continue using your social media account, and then trust that no one is going to quietly reuse that dataset for training AI or tweaking ad targeting, is laughable.

Plus, the tech isn’t perfect. Some kids will slip through. Some adults will get flagged incorrectly. There’ll be appeals processes, false positives, false negatives, a mess. And because the government has framed this as a “think of the children” issue, any imperfections will be blamed on the platforms, who will respond by tightening the screws further.

What do kids do under that pressure?

• Borrow Mum’s ID

• Screenshot Dad’s driver’s licence

• Use sketchy third‑party services to generate “proof”

So now we haven’t just made them sneakier; we’ve pushed them toward identity fraud and dodgy websites just to talk to their mates.

Top‑tier policy design right there.

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Better Ways We Could Have Done This

The most infuriating part? There were so many better options.

We could have:

• Forced platforms to implement stronger moderation, particularly around bullying and predatory behaviour.

• Required fast takedown mechanisms and proper escalation for reports involving minors.

• Banned targeted advertising to under‑18s and stopped platforms from harvesting kids’ data to feed the ad machine.

• Created clear parental control frameworks: under‑16 accounts linked to a parent account, with tools (not spyware) so parents can actually parent.

• Funded digital literacy education in schools so kids recognise grooming, manipulation, and emotional harm, and know what to do.

We could have taken a surgical approach:
Limit harmful features. Enforce privacy by default. Crack down on data abuse. Support kids and parents with tools and knowledge.

Instead we took a sledgehammer to the entire under‑16 population and called it “safety.”

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Welcome to the Start of the End (Maybe)

In a few days, this thing goes live and we get to watch the fallout in real time.

• Teens cut off from their online communities

• Kids’ small businesses gutted

• Youth groups scrambling for ways to reach the people they’re trying to help

• Parents caught in the middle

• Kids sneaking into worse corners of the internet because that’s all that’s left

All while the government pats itself on the back and spends our money on conferences and campaigns about how much they care.

I’m exhausted. I’m angry. And I am terrified that this is just the beginning, the start of the end of the internet as we knew it in Australia, not because tech changed, but because our laws are being written by people who don’t understand what they’re breaking.

If you’re under 16, or you care about someone who is, this matters. If you’re a small business owner or a youth leader or a parent, this matters. If you’re just sick of watching your tax dollars get set on fire while everything important gets harder and dumber, this matters.

I’ve got a mountain of work to do, so I’ll leave it there for now.
But trust me, if things keep going the way they’re going, I’ll be back on this soapbox.

Because someone needs to say out loud that this is bull.