Did you see that Australia banned social media for kids?
Australia implemented the world's first under-16 social media ban in late 2025. Now, the government's own compliance report confirmed what a lot of people predicted: a substantial proportion of Australian kids are still on these platforms. So is the ban working? And more importantly, is a ban the right answer to the teen mental health crisis?
In this episode, Jena and Michelle trace how we got here, and how a deeply emotional debate about teen mental health became a mandate for governments to simply cut kids off from social media. They dig into what the Australian law actually covers, why banning access may be quietly letting platforms off the hook, and what the research actually says versus what the headlines told us.
Plus: our thoughts on the new book, Yesteryear, and the Met Gala.
Find us on Substack!
* Michelle Ciulla Lipkin [https://michelleciullalipkin.substack.com/]
* Feed for Thought by Jena Wuu [https://www.feedforthought.com/]
Read our writing about social media and teen mental health:
* Michelle Ciulla Lipkin's response to The Anxious Generation [https://namle.org/the-anxious-generation-response-michelle-ciulla-lipkin/], NAMLE newsletter, 2024.
* Is the online child safety debate for young people, or for adults? [https://www.feedforthought.com/p/is-the-online-child-safety-debate], Feed for Thought, [https://www.feedforthought.com/] 2026.
Check out our recs:
* Is social media bad for kids' mental health? [https://opentodebate.substack.com/p/is-social-media-bad-for-kids-mental-health], Aspen Ideas Festival, 2023.
* Growing Up in Public: Coming of Age in a Digital World [https://devorahheitner.com/growing-up-in-public/] by Devorah Heitner, 2023.
Want to learn more?
* Anxious Generation Movement [https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/]
* Health advisory on social media use in adolescence, [https://www.apa.org/topics/social-media-internet/health-advisory-adolescent-social-media-use] American Psychological Advisory, 2023.
* Social Media Minimum Age: Compliance Update, [https://www.esafety.gov.au/sites/default/files/2026-03/SocialMediaMinimumAgeComplianceUpdateMarch2026.pdf] Australia eSafety Commissioner, March 2026.
* Social Media and Youth Mental Health [https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/reports-and-publications/youth-mental-health/social-media/index.html], Office of the Surgeon General (US Department of Health and Human Services), 2023.
* The great rewiring: Is social media really behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness? [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00902-2], Nature, 2024.
* We're not the anxious generation [https://joanganzcooneycenter.org/2025/11/06/were-not-the-anxious-generation/] by Maximilian Milovidov, 2025.
