BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Starting this week, on December 10th, Australia will become the first country to ban all children under 16 from having social media accounts. This is meant to be a sweeping law that covers TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Threads, and other popular platforms. Whether the move will meaningfully protect young people or simply push them toward digital workarounds is still unclear. The only thing that is clear is that the rest of the world is watching closely. A radical response to growing harm The ban follows a government-commissioned study released earlier this year that painted a troubling picture of kids’ online lives. 96 percent of children aged 10 to 15 were using social media, and 70 percent had been exposed to harmful content, including misogyny, violence, and material promoting suicide and eating disorders. One in seven had been targeted by grooming behavior, and more than half reported being cyberbullied. The government cited these findings when introducing the ban, accusing social media platforms of promoting “design features that encourage [young people] to spend more time on screens” while pushing content that “can harm their health and wellbeing.” What the ban actually does Children under 16 can no longer create or maintain social media accounts across ten platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, and Twitch. Existing accounts must be deactivated. However, kids can still watch most content passively as the ban only blocks interactive accounts. Interestingly, platforms like YouTube Kids, WhatsApp, and Google Classroom are exempt, as they don’t meet the criteria for being “social” in the legal sense. Online games such as Roblox and Discord are also excluded, though some have quietly added age-gating features. Who’s responsible—and what’s at stake The law doesn’t punish children or parents. Instead, the burden falls entirely on social media companies, who must take “reasonable steps” to keep under-16s off their platforms or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (about USD $32 million). To comply, companies must implement age assurance technology that goes beyond simple self-declared birthdays. That may include government ID checks, facial or voice recognition, or advanced algorithms that infer a user’s age based on online behavior. Companies like Meta and Snapchat are already adapting. Meta began removing teen accounts in early December, allowing wrongly flagged users to appeal using ID or video selfies. Snapchat offers age verification through bank accounts and photo IDs. Why critics say the policy is flawed Despite good intentions, critics worry the rollout may backfire. Facial recognition is notoriously unreliable for teens, and many fear the law will block adults by mistake while letting determined underage users slip through. Stephen Scheeler, a former Facebook executive, questioned the effectiveness of the fines. “It takes Meta about an hour and 52 minutes to make A$50 million in revenue,” he told AAP. Others point to loopholes: dating apps, gaming platforms, and AI chatbots, some of which have been flagged for predatory or sexually suggestive behavior, are not covered by the ban. Even teens themselves seem skeptical. Some admitted that they’re setting up fake accounts, switching to shared family profiles, or planning to use VPNs to mask their age and location. These are all tactics already used by kids in the UK after similar laws were enacted. Platform pushback and privacy concerns Tech companies weren’t shy about their frustration. YouTube’s parent company, Google, called the new law “rushed” and warned it may make kids less safe by removing access to safety tools built into accounts. Meta warned of “inconsistent protections” across apps. Critics also flagged the privacy implications of collecting biometric data and IDs to verify age, especially in a country where data breaches have exposed sensitive personal information in recent years. The government insists the legislation includes strong data protections: information collected can only be used for age verification and must be deleted immediately after. “It’s going to look untidy” Communications Minister Annika Wells admitted the rollout won’t be flawless. “It’s going to look a bit untidy on the way through,” she said. “Big reforms always do.” The government maintains that doing something is better than doing nothing, especially as global anxiety around kids’ digital safety grows. Denmark has announced a similar under-15 ban, France is debating a curfew for teens on social media, and Spain and Norway are exploring new restrictions. In the UK, companies now face major fines or even jail time for executives if they fail to prevent kids from accessing harmful content. In the U.S., efforts like Utah’s under-18 ban have been blocked in court. A test case for global policy Australia’s law is a bold experiment in regulating digital spaces for children. It’s messy, imperfect, and controversial, but it may also become a blueprint for countries grappling with how to raise kids in a hyperconnected world. The post Australia’s bold move to ban kids under 16 from social media sparks important global debate first appeared on The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News.

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Foreign Affairs Bannon, Mearsheimer: Trump’s Ukraine Plan Won’t End the War Establishment Ukraine hawking has largely drowned out restraint-oriented criticisms of the 28-point plan. Russia hawks in Congress and their allies in corporate media have been on the warpath against the Trump administration’s 28-point peace plan for ending the Ukraine war, dubbing the plan a “Russian wish-list.” The MSNBC host Rachel Maddow went so far as to hold it up as proof that “the Kremlin runs U.S. foreign policy.” Those cable news narratives have proceeded almost entirely without reference to the actual text of the plan, which—as noted in TAC—is hardly a one-sided victory for Moscow. Yet there are also criticisms of the plan from the other end of the ideological spectrum. Among the most prominent voices who argued from the start that the United States should never have been drawn into the Ukraine conflict are the War Room host and former White House advisor Steve Bannon and the University of Chicago’s Professor John Mearsheimer. They now warn that far from being a “Russian wish list,” the Trump administration’s plan may not actually address the underlying political problems that ultimately caused the Ukraine proxy war. The American Conservative asked both which aspects of the 28-point plan concern them the most.  “The very concept of it,” Bannon said. “America First [broke] the globalist mindset that we have the capacity financially, economically, militarily, culturally to govern everywhere and everything. Both plans—20-point in the Middle East and 28-point in the Bloodlands are ENORMOUSLY complex and mind boggling on their execution. We don’t have the capacity to take on—particularly because these are side shows to our vital national security interests.” Mearsheimer likewise argues that there are “three major sticking points in the original 28-point plan that simply cannot be resolved to the satisfaction of both sides, guaranteeing that the war will ultimately be resolved on the battlefield, likely with a Russian victory. “First, the Ukrainians want a meaningful security guarantee from the U.S. if they cannot be in NATO. The Russians will not let that happen,” Mearsheimer said. “Second, the Russians demand that Ukraine and the West accept the fact that Moscow has annexed Crimea and the four eastern-most oblasts of Ukraine. Ukraine and Europe refuse to do so.”  But Mearsheimer suggests there’s an even more fundamental issue. “Finally, Russia wants Ukraine to permanently disarm to the point where it is not an offensive threat to Russia,” he said. “The Ukrainians and the West refuse this demand, because they say it will leave Ukraine vulnerable to a future Russian attack. There is no middle ground regarding these three issues, which the Russians and the Ukrainians—as well as their European allies—see as non-negotiable.” Among the questions raised by the 28-point plan is whether any settlement reached now would survive beyond a single administration. Even if Trump were to secure an agreement from Moscow and Kiev, nothing stops the permanent foreign-policy apparatus in Washington from treating it exactly as it treated Minsk: not as a genuine political settlement, but as “an attempt to give Ukraine time,” as Angela Merkel famously described it. “There is nothing Trump can do to assuage Russian fears that any agreement Moscow reaches with Ukraine and the West will stick over time,” Mearsheimer said. “How can any Russian leader trust the West given what has happened since 2014? More generally, how can any state know for sure that another state won’t renege on a deal in the future. In fact, it can’t.” Bannon and Mearsheimer agree that the 28-point plan cannot work while the United States continues to arm Ukraine through NATO, but they diverge sharply on what that failure implies. Bannon argues the U.S. can still walk away, while Mearsheimer maintains that Washington will remain deeply involved regardless. Even as the Trump administration engages in negotiations to end the Ukraine proxy war, the U.S. simultaneously continues to funnel weapons to that war through the arms pipeline we established with NATO. NATO Secretary General Rutte is constantly celebrating U.S. assistance. The weapons that Ukraine uses to kill Russian soldiers and increasingly to strike inside Russia itself are marked “Made in the USA.”  Asked about the Trump administration’s current arms pipeline with NATO, which is fueling the Ukraine proxy war, Bannon told TAC that “[We] need to cut it all off. All of it. Money. Arms. Intelligence Support.”  Mearsheimer, on the other hand, argues that this is unlikely to happen. “Trump does not simply want to cut off the flow of arms to Ukraine and accelerate the end of this conflict, because he knows that Ukraine is going to lose and he does not want to be blamed,” he said. “He wants to be able to say that the West—including the U.S.—supported Ukraine to the bitter end and it was Ukraine’s fault it lost.” As Trump pursues the negotiations he promised on the campaign trail, he simultaneously engages in congressional politics that appear to sit in open tension with the America First logic the administration says guides those talks. Perhaps the leading opponent of Ukraine spending in the House has been Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who will retire early from Congress after extended conflict with the president. Conversely, a leading supporter of arms and money for Ukraine in the Senate—South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham—received a Trump endorsement. (Trump will reportedly campaign for him in 2026).  Bannon rejects the idea that those moves signal that President Trump is abandoning the America First base. “Remember he is commander-in-chief and trying to stop, then wind down the kinetic part of the Third World War,” Bannon said.  Mearsheimer partially agrees. “I don’t think Trump is abandoning his America First base, but I think lots of people in his base are abandoning him, simply because they don’t think he is pursuing America First policies. This is certainly true with regard to Israel, where he clearly puts Israel’s interest above America’s interests.” The post Bannon, Mearsheimer: Trump’s Ukraine Plan Won’t End the War appeared first on The American Conservative.