Why Social Media Age Bans Could Make the Internet Less Safe for Children

Proponents of social media bans often point to benefits such as improved concentration. However, efforts to enforce these bans by blocking workarounds may create new problems. Avoidance is a signal—not merely a nuisance or behavior that should be discouraged.

When children actively look for ways to circumvent age restrictions, it highlights the limitations of blanket bans. Restricting social media can also limit access to information that is important to adolescents’ development, identity formation, and socialization.

Stronger restrictions could even backfire. Closing age-gating loopholes may push children toward less regulated and higher-risk areas of the web. Age-verification requirements can also reduce privacy and security by forcing users to submit sensitive personal information to prove their age.

Our research found that parents and children want smarter, more nuanced policies that protect children, families, and individual rights. These policies could include stronger limits on companies’ data collection and flexible tools that allow families to control content and access on their own terms.

Age gates do not necessarily create the desired changes or make parenting in a digital world easier. At best, they may prompt awkward questions and postpone important conversations until a child’s 16th birthday. In the worst-case scenario, children may be left without guidance as they navigate the online world.

How Social Media Bans Could Create an Unsafe Internet for Children

When young people bypass restrictions, they are often displaying qualities that support healthy development: curiosity, problem-solving, and independence. Online exploration can help children develop social skills and form their identities.

A ban can hide these motivations and take a paternalistic approach that fails to account for young people’s real needs and online behavior.

Age restrictions may also conflict with the wishes of some parents. When we investigated social media safety interventions, parents told us that they sometimes lie to their children to gain access to necessary but age-gated services.

This is not a new phenomenon. A 2011 study found that some parents were teaching their children how to get around Facebook’s age restrictions.

Parents are not a monolithic group. Many want to responsibly access their children’s social media activity so they can help them connect with like-minded peers, find useful information, and learn digital safety skills early. For some parents, these benefits outweigh the risks.

If parents do not support access—or if children cannot reach the platforms they want—they may migrate to alternative online spaces with fewer safeguards. Sometimes, these alternatives are harmless. Children may use unconventional tools such as Google Docs or podcast comment sections to communicate with one another.

However, children may also move to more dangerous platforms, leaving them vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. In the wake of Australia’s social media ban, a preliminary investigation found that children’s overall screen time had not decreased significantly. Instead, some young users appeared to redirect their activity to online spaces that were unsupervised and unknown to their parents.

Just as empty cities can become unstable, the most dangerous platforms for young people may be the least visible parts of the digital landscape. Outdated, declining, and under-resourced platforms can attract vulnerable young users as well as people who seek to exploit them.

Why Age Verification Could Make the Internet Less Safe for Everyone

Age gates carry risks of their own. Some platforms automatically track users’ online activity to verify their age. This can involve profiling users, collecting personal data, and analyzing information to draw inferences about them—potentially increasing the risk of misuse or disclosure.

Companies may also request sensitive documents, such as a driver’s license, to verify a user’s age. Mishandled documents can contribute to identity theft and other forms of abuse.

Data breaches are another concern. Discord reported last year that 5CA, one of the third-party services used for age verification, had been compromised, exposing at least 70,000 images of users’ government IDs.

Information from those documents could be used maliciously by linking a driver’s license to a specific account or private online activity. This could reveal sensitive details ranging from a user’s political opinions to their sexual preferences.

Smarter Online Safety Policies Are Needed

Broad social media bans and mandatory age gates may not address the underlying reasons children use online platforms. They can also push young people toward less visible and less regulated spaces while requiring everyone to surrender more personal information.

A more effective approach would protect children through stronger data-collection limits, flexible family controls, and policies that recognize how young people actually behave online.