Teens Bypass Social Media Bans, Raising Doubts About Age Restrictions

In July, France joined Australia in restricting minors from accessing social media, barring children under 15 from major platforms before the country’s top court blocked the ban on human rights grounds. The United Kingdom aims to forbid children under 16 from accessing Facebook, TikTok and other platforms in early 2027. The European Union has announced its own plan to prohibit social media for children under 15.

Australia enacted its ban in 2024. A study published earlier this year found that four in five teenagers under 16 managed to get onto barred platforms, according to MIT Technology Review. Teens have used tactics including a sibling’s face for ID verification and drawing fake facial hair. Some ban proponents have called for stronger enforcement to block those workarounds.

MIT Technology Review argues that circumvention is a signal, not a nuisance or something simply to be deterred. The fact that children actively seek ways around bans highlights their limitations, the article says. Social media bans suppress young people’s access to information, including information the article describes as essential to development, identity formation and socialization, especially during adolescence. Further restriction is likely to backfire, it argues, by pushing children toward less-moderated, higher-risk parts of the web. Age verification also degrades privacy and security for everyone by forcing people to submit sensitive personal information to prove their age.

In their work, the authors say they found that parents and children both want smarter, more nuanced policies that protect children, families and their rights. Those policies could include stronger limits on data collection by companies, or flexible tools that let families control content and access on their own terms. Age gates will not bring the desired change or simplify parenting in the digital world, according to the article. At best, they raise thornier questions and postpone the conversation to a child’s 16th birthday; at worst, they leave children without guidance as they navigate online.

When young people circumvent restrictions, the article says, they often do what developing minds are expected to do and what is celebrated in other contexts: lean into curiosity, solve problems and exercise independence. It is important for children to do this online, an arena where they often develop social skills and refine their identities, the article says. Bans take a paternalistic approach that does not consider young people’s needs or the realities of what they do online, it adds. The approach also ignores what some parents want.

When the authors examined social media safety interventions last year, parents told them they often join their children in lies that help them gain access to needed but gated services. Research from 2011 showed that parents taught their children how to evade Facebook age restrictions. Many parents see responsible access to social media as a way to help children connect with like-minded peers, find informational content and learn digital safety skills early. Many believe the benefits outweigh the risks, according to the article.

When parents do not help provide access and children cannot get into platforms they want, they will likely move toward alternative online spaces that often have fewer guardrails, the article says. Sometimes they end up on fairly innocuous, if unconventional, platforms, communicating through Google Docs or podcast comment sections. Other times they move to more dangerous platforms that can leave them vulnerable to abuse and predation. After Australia’s ban, preliminary research shows that children’s screen time has not meaningfully decreased but has sometimes been redirected, with some young users going to spaces that are unmonitored and unknown to parents. The most risky platforms for young people are those with the fewest eyes on the digital street, the article says; outdated, dying and under-resourced platforms tend to attract both vulnerable youth and those who prey on them.

Age gates carry their own dangers, according to MIT Technology Review. Some platforms automatically track users’ online activities to confirm their age. In doing so, they profile users, collecting and analyzing data to make inferences about them, which can increase the risk that data will be misused or leaked. Companies may also ask for personal documents such as driver’s licenses to verify age, which can lead to mishandling of sensitive documents or identity theft.