Labor Government Expands Under-16 Social Media Ban to YouTube

YouTube will be included in Australia’s incoming social media ban, with the federal Labor government going back on an earlier policy.

This means children under the age of 16 will be prohibited from having an active account on the video-sharing platform, along with other popular social media apps such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and X from early December 2025.

However, YouTube Kids, a different version of YouTube for children under 13 years old, will not be affected.

Children can still watch videos on this platform, which has strict content controls, with time limits and no comment or chat functions.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the expansion of the social media ban was necessary to protect Australian children.

“Social media has a social responsibility, and there is no doubt that Australian kids are being negatively impacted by online platforms, so I’m calling time on it,” he said in a statement.

“Social media is doing social harm to our children, and I want Australian parents to know that we have their backs.”

Albanese’s remarks were echoed by Communications Minister Anika Wells.

“The Albanese government is giving kids a reprieve from the persuasive and pervasive pull of social media while giving parents peace of mind,” she said.

“There’s a place for social media, but there’s not a place for predatory algorithms targeting children.”

YouTube was initially exempted from the scope of the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024, as the government did not classify it as a social media service.

Instead, it was viewed as a video-sharing platform with limited social interaction functions that hosts a large amount of educational content used in classrooms or teaching environments.

However, this changed when a recent research (pdf) by the eSafety Commission revealed that 37 percent of Australian children aged 10–15 reported encountering harmful or inappropriate content on YouTube.

This prompted eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant to formally recommend to Minister Wells that YouTube be included in the social media ban.

“When we asked where they were experiencing harm and the kinds of harms they were experiencing, the most prevalent place where young Australians experienced harm was on YouTube—almost 37 percent,” she said.

“This ranges from misogynistic content to hateful material, to violent fighting videos, online challenges, disordered eating, and suicidal ideation.”

Meanwhile, tech giant Google, which owns YouTube, has warned that it would take legal action if the video-sharing platform is included in the social media ban.

In a letter to Wells, Google hinted that the company could challenge the ban on the grounds that it restricts the implied constitutional freedom of political communication.