A blunt ban on under-16s online risks more harm than protection

Australia’s new law barring children under 16 from major social platforms has landed in the High Court after a legal challenge from Reddit and Australian digital advocates. The claim is stark: a blanket restriction on access infringes constitutional rights. The dispute forces a simple but urgent question on to the national agenda — how do we protect children from real online harms without shutting them out of the digital life that is now integral to education, social connection and civic participation? There is no argument against protecting kids from exploitation, grooming, disinformation or addictive design. Those dangers are real and lawmakers have an obligation to act. But laws that operate with a blunt instrument risk creating unintended, widespread damage. For many teenagers, social platforms are the modern public square: places to learn, collaborate on schoolwork, access health information, and maintain relationships. Excluding everyone under 16 could deny young people important sources of support and information at precisely the time they need them. The constitutional challenge rests on more than technicality. It highlights deeper concerns about proportionality and the rule of law: whether government has properly weighted the means against the harms, and whether less invasive measures were exhausted before resorting to a categorical exclusion. When activists insist “they shouldn’t be shut out”, they are articulating a common-sense principle. Rights that are curtailed to protect welfare can be justified — but only when the response is tailored, evidence‑based and demonstrably necessary. Practical problems also loom. Age verification at scale is fiendishly difficult to do without creating privacy nightmares or a surveillance architecture that parents and rights groups will rightly distrust. Young people can and will find workarounds; they will migrate to unregulated spaces, encrypted apps, or underground communities where harms can become harder to detect and mitigate. A ban could paradoxically reduce the visibility of the very behaviours regulators seek to stamp out. A healthier path would combine layered protections: firm regulation on platform design that limits manipulative algorithms and in‑app purchases, enforceable standards for content moderation and rapid reporting, better digital literacy in schools, and targeted supports for vulnerable children. Industry must be required to build safety-by-design into products and to be transparent about their methods and data practices. At the same time, parents and educators should be equipped with clear, usable tools and guidance. The High Court will have to weigh liberty, technology and child welfare in an environment that changes faster than legislation. Whatever the legal outcome, lawmakers should see this as an opportunity to step back from quick fixes and design policies that both protect and empower young Australians. If the goal is genuine safety, the answer will not be to cut a generation off. It will be to build systems that keep them safe where they actually are — online.