Social media ban ‘devastating’ for teen influencers
A Melbourne teenager is hanging on to her creative future but fears Australia’s social media ban will impact her income and opportunities.
Carlee Jade Clements, 15, has 37,000 followers on Instagram and has not yet been kicked off the platform, although she was removed from TikTok in Australia when the world’s first social media ban went into effect on Wednesday.
Under the law, the 10 largest platforms, including Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat, were ordered to ban nearly one million users under the age of 16 from accessing their accounts.
Carlee has spent years building her Instagram following with the account run by her mother, Simone.
It serves as a digital portfolio to showcase her acting, dancing, and modeling and helps her secure paid opportunities, including brand deals.
“I flew to Sydney to do an Invisalign advert that I paid for, which I couldn’t have done if I didn’t have Instagram,” she told AAP.
“Being an actor is my dream job.”
But its followers and views declined as engagement metrics, one of the main determinants of revenue from advertisers, and its mostly young audience were kicked off the platform.
“It’s really frustrating, it’s everything I’ve worked for,” Carlee said.
“It takes years and years and years of work, and to eliminate it like this is devastating.”
Carlee fears her Instagram account could be deleted at any time, effectively causing her to lose her job and networking opportunities.
“If I get fired, I won’t get my income,” he said.
“I definitely made some good money putting it into my savings, it helps me pay for my dance costumes.”
Communications Minister Anika Wells said the eSafety commission will ask all affected platforms to report how many under-16 accounts are still active.
Carlee will also miss the strong social bonds she built if she is removed from Instagram, adding that she received many supportive messages when her father died suddenly last year.
“Tens of thousands of people expressed their condolences and that meant a lot to us,” said Simone Clements.
He also supports fundraising campaigns for charities close to his heart, including Camp Quality and Redkite, which helps his twin brother Hayden, who battled two childhood brain tumors.
Some families moved abroad to avoid detection under Australian law; Bec Lea also cited this as one of the reasons she moved to the UK with her impressive 14-year-old daughter Charli.
The Lea family has more than 1.85 million YouTube subscribers.
“Once it became clear that the ban was actually coming, we knew we had to find a solution,” Ms. Lea said in a video.
“Charli loves being online.”
Parents and children will not be punished if they exceed the ban; The onus will fall on the tech giants to take “reasonable steps” to prevent those under 16 from accessing their accounts or face fines of up to $49.5 million.
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