Kids and Teen Influencers in Australia Say ‘Bye-Bye’ to Social Media

When 15-year-old Carlee Jade Clements wakes up, her first thought is to record a Get Ready With Me video to share with her friends on TikTok. “I love recording everything and posting it the moment I have it,” says Clements, who lives in Melbourne, Australia.

Like many teenagers, Clements communicates with the world primarily through social media: Snapchat for messaging her friends, Pinterest for inspiration, TikTok for … well, everything. Unlike many teenagers, she also uses social media professionally; Clements has over 37,000 followers on Instagram, where she often posts product reviews (skin care, slime) and photos from her modeling and acting gigs.

But as of December 10, 2025, that will change. That’s when Australia’s Social Media Minimum Age regulation will go into effect, which will prevent Australians under 16 years old from having social media accounts. “It’s gonna be very weird and quiet and isolated,” says Clements. “I’m going to feel like I’m cut off from the world.”

Globally, people are starting to realize how social media can negatively impact adolescents. Even teenagers themselves are seeing this: Almost half of adolescents in the US claim these platforms harm people their age. Australia is the first country to take serious action. In December 2024, legislators passed the Social Media Minimum Age Bill, which will penalize tech platforms (including TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, X, YouTube, and Reddit) that allow under-16s to access their platforms.

In response, platforms are locking accounts and adopting age verification requirements. Some platforms, including Meta, started to enforce it early.

Teen content creators are taking steps, too. Zoey Bender, age 14, likes to post GRWM videos and tips: for making friends in high school, for starting seventh grade, for dealing with braces. “I love being creative about it,” says Bender, who has 58,000 followers on TikTok. “It’s my outlet.”

Her handle used to be @heyitszoey. In November, she and her dad, Mark, changed it to @_heyitszoeyandmark, with the hopes that her account won’t be deleted on December 10 because it’s now managed by an adult. She says that many other teenagers with large followings are doing the same; Clements’ mom already manages her Instagram account.

That means that once the age restrictions are in place, their professional accounts will likely still exist—although as teen and kid accounts are suspended, their engagement will likely go down, and they may lose followers, too. That would mean a decline in free products and in revenue, though it’s generally not a huge amount: Ava Jones, 12, who has 11,500 followers on Instagram, estimates that she makes $1,000-$2,000 Australian ($600-$1,300 US) per year, which she generally spends on makeup and clothes. “If that went away, I’d have to do more chores at home,” she says.

When Bender first found out about the legislation in April 2025, “I thought, ‘This is a joke, it won’t actually happen,’” she says. Then she started to get nervous. “I’m worried about losing my account, my community online, and everything I’ve worked for,” she says.

So she looked up what she could do to protest the law and filed an e-petition, asking the government to lower the age restriction to 13. She posted about it on her TikTok account and even walked around her neighborhood, asking strangers to sign it online. She ended up with 44,054 signatures. “It’s made me a lot more confident,” she said. “People at the shops say, ‘Oh, you’re the social media ban girl.’”

Bender largely sees being online as a positive influence. “Social media has taught me so much: How to be safe, makeup tips, how to email people, how to work like a business person,” she says. “I’ve learned more on social media in the past year than I have at school, ever.”

She concedes that maybe it would be better if people didn’t spend as much time on social media. But she counters that that’s not the world we live in—and overuse is not a problem unique to teenagers. “I think that people definitely do spend too much time on their phone, but that’s a whole world problem, not an under-16 problem,” says Bender. As she sees it, her generation has grown up in a world with social media, and taking away access isn’t the solution.

Besides, motivated kids and teenagers will get around the legislation. “I don’t think it’s really gonna last long,” says Jones, the 12-year-old. “There’ll be kids faking their age.”

It’s a popular opinion: A recent survey from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation found that just 6 percent of respondents aged 9 to 15 think the ban will work, and 75 percent of those who use social media don’t plan to stop using it once it takes effect. (New apps, like Coverstar and Yope, are already popping up to circumvent the regulations, prompting a game of legislative whack-a-mole.)

Instead, Jones—and Clements and Bender—think the government should leave it up to parents to set rules around social media use. Bender has to give her phone to her parents at 9:30 pm every night. Clements’ mom has all of her daughter’s accounts downloaded to her phone so she can look through messages regularly. (Multiple parents said that the bullying or creepy messages come from adult users, not other kids.)

While the content creators are upset about losing their audiences, they’re mostly upset about the same thing as other teenagers are: the impact on their social lives, especially when they’re in group chats with a mix of friends, some of whom are 16 and some who are younger.

They can’t really remember a life without social media; all three talk to their friends primarily through Snapchat. Clements seems vaguely horrified by the idea of giving her phone number to her friends, and Jones seems genuinely unsure whether she and friends who she doesn’t see at school will be able to keep in touch. “I don’t even know my own phone number,” says Clements. “Oh my gosh, I’m going to have to memorize it.”