This is a great question with a few key answers. The main reason is to limit young people's exposure to adult topics and content that they may find difficult to process. The ban also addresses serious concerns shared by students and parents, including digital distraction, toxic online behaviour, cyberbullying, and excessive screen time.

The overall aim is to give young people more time to develop the skills and maturity needed to handle, report, and avoid this type of content when they inevitably re-download these platforms in the future. 

It's true that no two children are the same, and each will use platforms differently, the Australian Parliament has voted for a measure that prioritises the collective safety of all young people. For the law to be effective, it must be a widespread, "blanket" rule.

A potential benefit of this approach is that no child will feel singled out by their parents' rules or feel they are missing out. In fact, some parents have said they feel a weight has been lifted.

While gaming platforms present many similar challenges to social media—in fact, the group chats and toxic behaviour on platforms like Discord can often rival those on Snapchat—the legislation focuses on a platform's "sole purpose."

Since the primary purpose of a gaming platform is to play games, they do not technically fall under the banner of social media. This is despite the fact that voice chats and other communication are often essential for gameplay.

This is a tough one to answer, and unfortunately the road is not yet clear. It will be up to each platform to decide. They have two main options: deactivate or delete an underage user's account. If an account is deactivated, they may be able to get it back with a simple sign-in. However, if it's deleted, the account and all its data will be gone permanently.

Nope! The eSafety Commission does not expect a platform to make every account holder go through an age check process if it has other accurate data indicating the user is older than 16 years of age.

One of the examples listed, is if the user has held a facebook account in Australia since 2006, the assumption is no further check is needed.

The phrase ‘reasonable steps’ is the latest buzz word. No solution is 100% effective and some students may find workarounds. It is up to the platform to police and regulate through these reasonable steps, but what “steps” are we talking about? This may involve a combination of Age Verification, Age Estimation, and Age Inference, using methods like facial ID scanning, biometrics, behavioural analysis, and document verification.

Here we will refer to the above... Each Platform will be required to take steps to work out if the account holder ‘usually’ lives in Australia and/or may in fact be using a VPN to change their location and access apps that are allowed in other countries. This includes identifying location based on signals such as:

• IP address(es)
• GPS or other location services
• device language and time settings
• a device identifier
• an Australian phone number
• app store or operating system, or account settings
• photos, tags, connections, engagement, or activity.