Almost one year on from the start of Australia’s landmark social media ban, it is clear that the law has failed to stop most children from accessing the platforms. Meanwhile, teenagers are hoping to overturn the policy through a challenge at the nation’s highest court.

“I’m bringing the High Court case because young Australians have a right to be in the digital town square,” says Noah Jones, a primary witness opposing the ban in the case, which started hearings on 3 November. “This is the world of technology and I’m entitled to see it all and not be shut out.”

Jones was 15 when the ban came into effect, prohibiting under-16s from accessing social media sites, including Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and TikTok. He was a plaintiff in the case, but withdrew due to the risk of costs being awarded against his family.

Now, the constitutional challenge is being led by advocacy group the Digital Freedom Project, alongside Reddit, which – like other social media behemoths – fears that Australia’s social media ban will be replicated elsewhere around the world. The primary argument before the court this week has been that the ban limits the freedom of political communication for under-16s.

In spite of this challenge and widespread concerns about implementing and enforcing a social media ban for children, numerous nations, including the UK, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil and a number of EU members, say they, too, will follow suit.

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From the moment the policy was announced, many experts warned that it would be unworkable and could have negative outcomes, and that the real target of any policy should be the platforms, their algorithms and what they allow online.

The biggest failure of the policy highlighted by researchers is that most children have been able to keep their profiles. One study by Courtney Barnes at the University of Newcastle in Australia and her colleagues, who surveyed more than 400 under-16s prior to the ban and then again three months after it, were still using prohibited platforms.

Such research and similar findings from Australia’s forced the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, to announce in June a from AUS$49.5 million to AUS$99 million ($35 million to $69 million) if breaches were identified. He also introduced a raft of new powers for the eSafety commissioner to compel companies to provide information about what they were doing to get kids off their sites.

At that time, Albanese said countries around the world were following Australia’s lead on social media reform, but that social media companies weren’t doing enough to exclude children.

Yet, nearly half a year later, and in spite of widespread evidence that the laws have had little effect on teens’ social media use, not a single fine has so far been issued.

“Some kids hid accounts and devices from parents at first, but when accounts shut down, we all just made a new one or had someone older do the face scan,” says Jones. “Kids just laughed and kept using socials. Most kids I know have more social media accounts than last year because new platforms popped up and we tried them out.”

at the Age Verification Providers Association in London says up to 80 per cent of children have kept their accounts, with half saying they were never challenged and over a third retaining access “thanks to the false ages they originally used to create the account”.

“Australia has been a missed opportunity for those who hoped it would provide evidence on the benefits and drawbacks of age restrictions for social media, because the platforms did not implement the law in good faith,” says Corby.

He says the UK’s communications watchdog, Ofcom, has been much clearer about the requirement for highly effective age assurance when the UK brings in its restrictions next spring, and that ministers are “alive to the need for robust legislation that pre-empts loopholes”. “The social media platforms may think they have muddied the waters and avoided a successful precedent being set by Australia, but it is clear that lessons are also being learned by observers.”

at CyberSafety Solutions, an Australian consultancy, says it is sad that teens around the world can access Instagram teen accounts with inbuilt safety settings, limited content and algorithmic controls, yet Australian children cannot because of the ban. She says this is pushing them to far less safe platforms. “I would never have found primary kids even knowing what Reddit was before the ban, but now it’s mainstream for kids as their vetting is easily bypassed,” says McLean.

at the University of Sydney says her children have been able to retain their social media accounts and a “tentative conclusion” can be drawn that not that much has changed for Australian teens. She says there is no point doubling the penalty for social media firm breaches if the government isn’t going to enforce the law. “What does enforcement look like? Are we going to see that? Are we going to see these platforms being taken to court?” Jeffery asks.

at RMIT University in Melbourne says governments around the world have been captivated by the headlines rather than the data. Instead of bans, efforts should instead be on online safety and digital duty of care, she says.

It is impossible to keep children from interacting online and the focus of governments should be on making platforms safe, says Given. “My main message is that this isn’t the solution,” she says. “I think other countries really need to actually look at the data.”

Noah Jones, the young witness in the High Court case, says the arguments made by the government’s lawyers in court this week left him dismayed. “I don’t matter as an Australian when they say I’m not an elector and they do not seem to know the shorthand of how people communicate today,” he says. “I resent when statements are made that I should form a local club to exchange ideas or drop pamphlets – that sounds like my mum’s childhood before the internet.”

Social media giants Meta and YouTube have been found liable by a California jury for negligence that caused harm to a young woman’s mental health. The landmark decision is among the first of many similar cases, and could be the beginning of a trend that may force major changes in how social platforms work.

The companies have been ordered to pay $3 million in compensatory damages, which are meant to cover the plaintiff’s financial losses related to the events relevant to the case, as well as pain and suffering. The jury has not yet decided the amount of any punitive damages – money the companies would pay as punishment for their actions.

The claim held by the young woman at the centre of the trial, known in court documents as KGM, was that the addictive nature of these social media products led to her anxiety and depression, and the jury agreed. Originally, the lawsuit included Tiktok (owned by ByteDance) and Snapchat (owned by Snap) as well, but they settled out of court before the trial began.

This case was not unique: thousands of similar lawsuits have been filed against social media companies across the US alleging that their products are addictive and harmful. Most of the cases have not yet gone to trial, but one in New Mexico was decided on 24 March, with a similar outcome. In that case, the state alleged that Meta failed to protect children from exploitation on its platforms, and a jury found the company guilty. Meta was ordered to pay $375 million in damages.

The question now is whether cases like this will result in substantive changes to the social media products that have been ruled to be harmful. In the US, free speech laws have made it difficult to demand any changes to social media platforms – in particular, one called Section 230 that prevents companies from being held liable for content posted on their platforms by users. But those same laws have made it difficult to win lawsuits like these, so this may well be a turning point.

The New Mexico case is moving towards a second phase, in which a judge will decide what changes, if any, Meta will be required to make to its social media platforms going forward.

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A Meta spokeperson told New Scientist that the company disagrees with the verdicts and intends to appeal in both cases. Jose Castañeda, a spokesperson for Google, which owns YouTube, stated that the company intends to appeal the California decision. Several more lawsuits are set to go to trial in the coming months, and if this trend continues, it could force sweeping changes to the social media landscape.

Right now, I’m glued to my phone. Like most people in the US, I get my news from various apps – social posts, podcasts, newsletters – and when things are blowing up (literally) I can’t look away. People in Minneapolis are posting video updates from protests; experts are publishing essays about international law and the US attack on Venezuela. I have to consume them all! The weirdest part, though, is that the more I watch and read what other people are saying, the lonelier I feel.

This is hardly a new or unique experience. Sociologists have been talking about it for nearly 80 years. In 1950, scholars David Riesman, Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denney published a book called , in which they argued that the rise of consumerism and mass media had led to a new kind of personality type that is deeply sensitive to loneliness. They called this personality “other-directed”, and their descriptions feel startlingly prescient in our era of social media and AI chatbots.

Other-directed people are constantly attuned to what everyone around them is doing, using the preferences of their peer groups to decide what to buy, wear and think. Because their values come from peers, rather than elders or ancestors, they tend to be present-oriented and unconcerned with history. Riesman and his colleagues warned that other-directed people are obsessed with conforming, anxious to be “part of a crowd” and “having fun”. What other-directed people fear more than anything is being alone.

All of these personality traits are immediately recognisable to people dealing with social media, with its peer pressure, parasocial relationships with influencers and – especially these days – surveillance capabilities. We are always watching each other and being watched. And because we fear being alone, companies produce apps designed to fool us into thinking we aren’t. That’s one of the insidious things about AI chatbots, some of which are to act like friends.

When we cobble ourselves together out of what we think other people want, we hide from something crucial

There’s a paradox in every other-directed person’s heart. As much as we may want to conform, to be part of the group chat, we also want to feel like we are unique. Riesman and his colleagues explained that consumerism itself assuages this other-directed anxiety by offering “false personalisation”. You experience this when you find yourself choosing between six virtually identical polo shirts at the store. Picking one might make you feel that there’s a special brand out there just for you, but, fundamentally, all those shirts are the same. You wind up wearing a polo shirt just like everybody else.

This kind of false personalisation shows up all the time in the algorithms that shape our experiences online. TikTok and other apps have a “for you” feed full of videos that feel tailor-made for your specific tastes. And yet it is shaped by an algorithm that you don’t control, whose purpose is largely to keep your eyeballs glued to the same app that everyone else is glued to. It is “for you” in the service of conformity.

As other-directed people, we are invited to express ourselves mainly by participating in peer groups or by “joining the conversation”, as so many ads suggest. We turn ourselves into internet content, adding our words and videos to the morass of others online. Be yourself by showing that you are doing what everybody else is doing!

And yet we still feel lonely. Partly that’s because in-person friendships and communities are fundamentally different from online ones. But something else is going on here, and I think it has to do with the personality shifts chronicled in The Lonely Crowd. When we cobble ourselves together out of what we think other people want, we hide from something crucial: our own truly personal, messy, eccentric, non-conformist desires. We can’t connect with other people in a genuine way if we don’t know ourselves.

Riesman and his co-authors suggested two solutions to this other-directed problem. First, we need to take back our leisure hours from the hyper-consumerist sphere of media. All that effort we put into paying attention to our peers is too much like work, they argued, and we need more free play. Which brings me to their second suggestion, which is that people – and especially kids – should test out new identities and experiences. Figure out what you enjoy when nobody is telling you what “fun” is supposed to be. Do something you have never done before. Wear something dramatic or silly. Strike up a conversation with a neighbour you have never met. Surprise yourself. And see how it feels to just… experiment.

You won’t figure out who you are from a “for you” feed or a chatbot. So get off your phone, do something unexpected and be yourself for a while.

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What I’m reading
Notes From a Regicide, by Isaac Fellman, a fantastical tale of rebellion and family drama.

What I’m watching
Heated Rivalry, because I know how to have fun.

What I’m working on
Researching Sogdiana, my favourite ancient diaspora culture.

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Annalee Newitz is a science journalist and author. Their latest book is Automatic Noodle. They are the co-host of the Hugo-winning podcast Our Opinions Are Correct. You can follow them @annaleen and their website is