Australia Just Banned Social Media for Teens. What Happens Next

Under the Influence with Jo Piazza

Jo Piazza, Influence Inc.

Technology, Kids & Family, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Parenting

4.3 • 834 Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2025

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Australia just became the first country in the world to ban social media for anyone under sixteen. It’s a sweeping, messy and imperfect law. But it's also one of the first real attempts to hold tech companies accountable for the impact their platforms have on kids. We dig into what the ban actually does, why it matters even with all its flaws, and what the early backlash from teenagers and tech companies reveals. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey all, Joe here, and you are listening to Under the Influence. People keep asking me what I want for the holidays.
0:15.4	And I don't have a ton of great answers because honestly, when I want something, I just get it for myself.
0:23.1	There's a few little things that I told Nick Astor that I wanted. One of them is a pinini
0:28.1	press because we used to have this awesome pinini press and then it just disappeared. I think it
0:33.1	got lost during one of our moves and I think about it every time I make a sandwich about how much
0:40.4	better that sandwich would be if it were pressed. I do. I think I just want a pinini press
0:46.5	and some period underwear. And that for me just sums up being a middle-aged lady. Yeah,
0:56.0	a pinini press and some period underwear.
1:01.5	You know what else I want, though? I do want everyone to pre-order the Parisian heist.
1:07.9	I do. It is amazing. I just finished doing a last pass of it. And I love this book so much. It is heaps of fun. It's going to be the book of the summer. And if you
1:11.1	pre-order it right now, you're going to forget about it. And then it's going to be like an awesome present to yourself in July. Also, it's so dumb that pre-orders matter. We don't pre-order any other products in the entire world. But for books, it matters. It determines how many books are publishers print. It determines how many books
1:27.7	bookstores order. So just get those orders and now you know you're going to order it anyway.
1:32.5	And that can be your Christmas present to me, but also to you. So today we are not talking
1:38.9	about Christmas presents and we are not talking about the Parisian heist. We're actually
1:42.9	talking about something that I think is really, really interesting.
1:46.7	Just last week, Australia became the first country in the world to ban social media access for anyone under the age of 16.
1:54.9	Under the new law, major platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, X, which we don't even call X. It's so dumb.
2:03.4	Is anyone even on X anymore? I don't know. Anyway, under this new law, all of these major
2:09.1	platforms must deactivate all accounts belonging to under 16s and block new registrations
2:15.7	until users turn 16. I think this is a great idea. I really do. I know there's a
2:21.4	lot of young people in Australia who are upset about it. We're going to talk about them today,
2:25.7	but what I really want to talk about is why I think that laws like this are so important.
	...

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