What can we learn from Australia's social media ban for teens?

It doesn't work. Prohibition, abstinence etc never work. Just give parents easy ways to control it and let them decide. Parenting for them will never work.

There's only a debate when new goal posts are being considered, or the side effects like social media companies threatening to act out demanding identification like a drivers licence or some govt number. There is however already a proposed system for age verification utilising various methods but even so many who prefer anonymity would not opt in.

The initial debate about harmful algorithms should be settled. The original issues social media was asked to address (but refused) at the end of the 10s, the under 16 ban for at least the smart social media players in the market, should now be permanently sorted out ... even if under 16 children still use it. No doubt the once troubling algorithms that were reportedly funnelling some of the more vulnerable into darker area like self harm or other objectionable areas, was not nearly as hard as social media companies claimed it was to remove ... and were ceremoniously yanked out the minute the law took effect -- because the last thing any profit orientated company wants is to be dragged into courts where first on the slate is an account that belonged to an under 16 year old child which ended in some sort of tragedy, and even an unsophisticated screening would have suggested the content was clearly an issue.

Kids will remain using social media, that's a given, like to but a very much less extent, those who unlawfully also use various motorised vehicles on public roads, those that do probably better understand the risks, as would their parents. Parent and teachers who are so tired of kids having their nose in the smart phone rather than on other things they were supposed to do, now have the means to enforce it.

Personally the spate of kids steaming themselves doing silly things for cred which occasionally was newsworthy enough has dropped off - it's been many months since I've noted any such new material - but then again, my selection of tv and internet media is limited.