Australia banned under-16s from social media. The world is split on whether to follow

It took Cruz Condren about a week to lose his Snapchat account, and a few seconds to get it back. “It asked me to verify my age by a camera,” says the 14-year-old from the Gold Coast. “I just asked my mum to scan her face because she’s over 18. It just let me back on.” Fourteen-year-old Cruz Condren (right) still uses Snapchat, with his mother’s blessing. Six months after Australia became the first country to ban under 16s from social media, Cruz’s workaround – performed with his mother’s blessing – is the kind of evidence now being weighed in London, Brussels and Ottawa as governments decide whether to copy Australia’s experiment or learn from its mistakes. Communications Minister Anika Wells spent Thursday morning dialling in to a London broadcast studio via Zoom to make the case for the former. “A lot of people who are against a ban here are using what they describe as the evidence from Australia to say, look, this doesn’t work,” Sky News host Sophy Ridge put to her. “Loads of kids are getting around it, so what’s the point?” Wells’ answer was that the sceptics “and their allies in big tech” want doubt cast
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