Australia says social media ban is ‘for the good of our kids’ in new ad campaign
SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australia has launched a multimillion-dollar marketing campaign portraying a world-first social media ban on teenagers as “for the good of our children” ahead of a December start date.
The A$14 million ($9.05 million) campaign, titled “For The Good Of,” will run on television, billboards and “ironically” social media from Sunday, Communications Minister Anika Wells said on Tuesday.
Wells said the campaign aims to spread awareness about the upcoming changes for families, encouraging parents to “start the conversation” with their children about the ban.
“It’s called For The Good Of and it means the good of our children. Ultimately we’re doing these things for the good of young people in Australia,” he told reporters.
The 45-second video shows a group of children engrossed in their phones as a voice says: “For Kirsty’s sake, for Lucy and Anya’s sake, for Sam’s sake, for Holly’s sake, for Noah’s sake, for their sake.”
He then adds: “From December 10th, people under the age of 16 will no longer have access to social media accounts. This is part of a new law to keep under-16s safer online.”
Australia’s ban became law in November 2024 and aims to delay the ability of young people to set up social media accounts, from the age of 13 to 16 currently.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s centre-left government said research showed overuse of social media was harming young people, causing misinformation, enabling bullying and damaging depictions of body image.
Governments around the world are closely monitoring Australia’s implementation of the ban, while social media platforms have pushed back.
At a hearing in parliament on Monday, YouTube said the program could lead to “unintended consequences” and would be “extremely difficult” to implement. The video-sharing site owned by Alphabet has also flagged legal action against its inclusion in the ban.
Wells, the communications minister, said he was meeting this week with social media platforms including Meta, TikTok and Snapchat to “strengthen the government’s expectation of how it will implement the law”.
“I’m confident they understand their obligations under Australian law and will meet their obligations,” he said.
($1 = 1.5477 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Christine Chen in Sydney)
