Australia’s teen social media ban has a gaming-sized loophole

Gaming platforms are just social media in disguise

Roblox, Discord, and Twitch have almost the same social features as the banned platforms. Roblox offers direct messaging, friend networks, group areas, user-generated content sharing, and customizable profiles, just like Instagram or Facebook.

Discord provides servers organized by interests (think Facebook Groups), DMs, voice chat, and community areas. Twitch combines live chat, whispers (private messages), and communities that mirror the dynamics of Twitter.

The only meaningful difference is that these platforms wrap their social features into games or streams rather than photo feeds. But when kids spend hours on Roblox, they’re not just playing, they’re also socializing. Research shows that more than three-quarters of teens play online games with friends, and most use in-game chat and Discord as their main communication channel.

The platforms Australia exempts are not hypothetical risks. Since 2018, at least 24 people have been arrested in the United States for kidnapping or sexually abusing children fostered on Roblox. In 2023 alone, Roblox reported more than 13,000 cases of child abuse to authorities. AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett specifically warned that “criminals” were using Roblox to target vulnerable girls; This imprint’s report revealed that children were exposed to child sexual abuse material and extremist content on the platform.

Discord’s history is also worrying. The New Jersey Attorney General filed a lawsuit against Discord in April 2025 for deceptive business practices that exposed children to predators. The infamous 764 organization operated on Discord for years despite FBI warnings, forcing children, some as young as 14, to harm themselves and worse.

Twitch, meanwhile, was facing child abuse and grooming charges but was “still being evaluated” and its smaller rival Kick was also included in the ban.

‘We can control sharks’

Inman Grant says the evaluators used a hypothetical test: “If online gaming was the important or sole purpose and that was eliminated, would kids still use the messaging function to chat? Probably not,” he told reporters. But this logic goes beyond reality.

He says Roblox was exempt because evaluators determined that kids wouldn’t use the chat features without games; but this ignores the fact that predators today fully exploit these features.

Inman Grant acknowledged the contradiction directly: “Exemption does not mean that a platform is absolutely safe.” If safety is not the criterion, what are we actually protecting children from?

Inman Grant says that instead of including Roblox in the ban, he took voluntary commitments: to make accounts under 16 private by default and to prevent adult-teen communication without parental consent.

“We initially threatened official regulatory action and they said no, we would work with you,” he said in a statement on Wednesday.

But this is a compromise that undermines the entire premise of the ban. If Roblox’s voluntary measures provide sufficient protection, why are mandatory restrictions needed for Instagram? If Instagram’s voluntary measures are not enough, why are Roblox’s enough?

Communications Minister Anika Wells has repeatedly said the ban would create “cultural change” rather than comprehensive protection. “We can’t control the ocean, we can control the sharks,” he said, while also exempting platforms where sharks have been documented swimming.

The Minister is right that the law should aim at a cultural change. But when the rules make sense, the culture changes. Explaining to a 15-year-old why Instagram is banned but Discord isn’t (while they both offer DMs, communities, and social connectivity) requires mental gymnastics that Inman Grant and Wells struggle to articulate.

Other jurisdictions have avoided this confusion. The UK’s Online Safety Act regulates all forms of “user-to-user services” regardless of the alleged purpose, while the EU uses risk-based regulation, which treats platforms based on their actual potential for harm.

Instead, Australia created a law that banned Reddit, an anonymous forum, and escaped Discord, which hosts similar communities with arguably less oversight. The list includes Kick, in which a French broadcaster died on camera in August. Twitch, its biggest rival with similar risks, is in the evaluation phase.

Considering how kids actually spend their time online, the list seems inherently arbitrary and willfully uninformed.

Wells told reporters on Wednesday that the list was not final and that there was “room for maneuver” before December 10. But confusion over which platforms have been banned and which have been given a free pass will do little to reassure Australian families that the ban has been well thought through.

The federal government had a whole year to get this sorted out.

Wells insists there is “no place for predatory algorithms, harmful content and toxic popularity meters manipulating Australian children.” He’s right. But these systems don’t suddenly become acceptable around a game instead of a photo grid.

with Nick Newling

Get news and reviews on tech, gadgets and games in our Tech newsletter every Friday. Sign up here.