Thread by @troyhunt

Watching the dismay on my 13 year old daughter’s face as the final 2 weeks of social media access tick down to Dec 10. It’ll be 2028 before she can use Snapchat (and others again). What’s everyone think about this? esafety.gov.au/about-us/indus…

This got a lot of traction, it’s like the Twitter of old! So, let me clarify a few things as a parent, cybersecurity guy and industry commentator:

Firstly, recognise that parental decisions around how you raise children is very personal. Diet. Exercise. Religion. Study. Family. And, how they use social media, messaging and devices in general. There are wide-ranging views on all these, obviously.

A very valid argument is that this is the government taking decisions away from parents; shouldn’t it be OUR decision when to give kids access? Taking that right away from parents feels authoritarian, however…

…many parents are ill-equipped to make that decision and without doubt, there are harms associated with social media use and they’re most evident in younger users. These are well-documented and well-understood and don’t need repeating here.

The legislation requires “reasonable” measures by in-scope platforms to identify under 16s that go beyond simply asking for age. Social media companies have HUGE troves or profiling data that will enable them to challenge those who are underage.

That won’t mean that I need to be challenged for age proof, but it will likely mean that my 16 year old son will. So, how will that be done? It will be up to the platforms to implement and it will differ. There are problems with this:

The most obvious is the privacy risk should there be a data breach, which is precisely what happened with Discord last month: theguardian.com/games/2025/oct…

Then there are the issues around those wishing to anonymously use these platforms and, given we’re talking kids, those who may not even be ABLE to prove age. These are both technical and social problems without easy solutions.

That covers the situation we’ll face in 13 days from now and many people are upset about the prospect of kids losing access, but many other people in this thread were upset about kids HAVING access in the first place, so let’s address that:

Social media is not just about online interaction. In both my kids’ cases, Snapchat is also where they coordinate IRL actives with friends. They plan events, meet up in person and share photos and videos. It’s often the conduit for “go outside and play”.

But they’ll just move that elsewhere (iMessage, WhatsApp, etc). They’ll lose the broader access to more distant friends who they follow on Instagram and no longer be part of our Facebook posts (which is apparently “old people social media” 🤷‍♂️), but that’s deferring access.

We made the decision to give our kids social media when they turned 13. To my earlier point, that’s a parental right and particularly in this household with what I do and what they’ve been exposed to their entire lives, in hindsight, that was the right decision.

There are MANY mitigating controls around that access and I’ve written about that in detail in the past: troyhunt.com/sharenting-byo…

Finally, what SHOULD this legislation look like? I would prefer it define controls that social media platforms should implement for 13 to 16 year olds similar to Instagram for teens: help.instagram.com/995996839195964

Screen time, friend connections, public visibility, location sharing, media publishing etc. Give them CONTROLLED access, not no access. As it stands, we’ll see lots of unintended consequences in a couple of weeks time, and the cure may be worse than the disease.