The ban on under-16s accessing ‘harmful’ content that began this week has overwhelming approval from adults – even if it had a few teething issues

A few weeks ago, my 14-year-old went into the garage, pulled out his skateboard and told me this was going to be his “skate park summer”. I was curious about what was sparking his renewed interest in an activity he hadn’t thought about since he was 12. His response: “The ban.”

I was thrilled. As far as I was concerned, Australia’s world-first social media law aimed at preventing children under 16 from accessing social media apps was already a success. But this week, as the ban took effect, my son wasn’t so sure. Access to his accounts remained largely unchanged. Many of his friends were in the same position. Across the country, the rollout has been uneven, as social media companies try to work out how to verify kids’ ages.

Sisonke Msimang is the author of Always Another Country: A Memoir of Exile and Home (2017) and The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela (2018)

Several European nations are already planning similar moves while Britain has said ‘nothing is off the table’

Australia is taking on powerful tech companies with its under-16 social media ban, but will the rest of the world follow? The country’s enactment of the policy is being watched closely by politicians, safety campaigners and parents. A number of other countries are not far behind, with Europe in particular hoping to replicate Australia, while the UK is keeping more of a watchful interest.

The PM’s social media sortie has not been a total embarrassment, which may be a shame for him

The scene opens on the interior of an aeroplane.

A suited man in a luxurious seat looks pensively out the window, his face partially obscured, his chin delicately resting on his hand.

The policy to cut off social media access for more than 2 million under-16s remains popular with Australians, while other countries look to follow suit

On the lawns of the prime minister’s Kirribilli residence in Sydney, overlooking the harbour, Anthony Albanese said he had never been prouder.

“This is a day in which my pride to be prime minister of Australia has never been greater. This is world-leading. This is Australia showing enough is enough,” he said as the country’s under-16s social media ban came into effect on Wednesday.

Figures for England and Wales show there were 51,672 offences for child sexual exploitation and abuse online in 2024

Online child sexual abuse in England and Wales has surged by a quarter within a year, figures show, prompting police to call for social media platforms to do more to protect young people.

Becky Riggs, the acting chief constable of Staffordshire police, called for tech companies to use AI tools to automatically prevent indecent pictures from being uploaded and shared on their sites.

The platform’s esoteric watchlists and rating system appeal to cinephiles craving a different mode of discovery

I never thought I would use Letterboxd. The app’s premise of logging reviews of every film you watch felt like counting steps, and I generally prefer to exercise my pretension the old fashioned way – such as getting a BFA or frequenting art house cinema screenings where I am usually the only person under 50 in the theater.

But after I wrote about my feelgood movie for the Guardian – that would be Sullivan’s Travels, Preston Sturges’s perfect 1941 satire – I was swayed by two newsroom colleagues. “Hey Alaina, we heard you like movies,” one of them said. “What’s your Letterboxd?” I wanted to be part of the club, and signed up later that night. Now, I write thoughts on every movie I see, usually before I’ve even left the theater or closed out the streamer.

We asked you to share your views on your children’s use of social media and how the ban is affecting your family. Here is what you told us

For some parents, social media sucks up their children’s time and steals them away from family life, instilling mental health issues along the way. For others, it provides their children with an essential line to friends, family, connection and support.

When Australia’s social media ban came into effect on Wednesday, millions of under-16s lost access to their accounts and were prevented from creating new ones.

Our UN report reveals the link between the online misogyny and offline crimes that are hounding women out of public life

Networked misogyny is now firmly established as a key tactic in the 21st-century authoritarian’s playbook. This is not a new trend – but it is now being supercharged by generative AI tools that make it easier, quicker and cheaper than ever to perpetrate online violence against women in public life – from journalists to human rights defenders, politicians and activists.

The objectives are clear: to help justify the rollback of gender equality and women’s reproductive rights; to chill women’s freedom of expression and their participation in democratic deliberation; to discredit truth-tellers; and to pave the way for the consolidation of authoritarian power.

Dr Julie Posetti is the director of the Information Integrity Initiative at TheNerve, a digital forensics lab founded by Nobel laureate Maria Ressa. She is also a professor of journalism and chair of the Centre for Journalism and Democracy at City St George’s, University of London.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

As midlife audiences turn to digital media, the 55 to 64 age bracket is an increasingly important demographic

In 2022, Caroline Idiens was on holiday halfway up an Italian mountain when her brother called to tell her to check her Instagram account. “I said, ‘I haven’t got any wifi. And he said: ‘Every time you refresh, it’s adding 500 followers.’ So I had to try to get to the top of the hill with the phone to check for myself.”

A personal trainer from Berkshire who began posting her fitness classes online at the start of lockdown in 2020, Idiens, 53, had already built a respectable following.