More Than a Ban: What the First Real Evidence Is Telling Us

When Australia switched on its world first restrictions on social media for people under sixteen in December 2025, nobody really knew what would follow. More than half a year on, we are finally starting to find out and that is exactly why the subject is worth returning to. The loud predictions of the early debate have given way to the first real evidence; and the picture is more human and more complicated.

For a moment it looked decisive. Within days the major platforms had stripped access from millions of under sixteen accounts. In March 2026 the eSafety Commissioner released its first assessment and found that platforms had frequently fallen short, with many young people still holding accounts or quietly opening new ones. Researchers writing in the BMJ found little sign that overall time online had dropped and the Molly Rose Foundation reported that around seven in ten of the young people still using the platforms said getting around the rules had been easy. In June 2026 the federal government responded by doubling the maximum penalty for non-compliance to close to one hundred million dollars and opening formal investigations into Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube. The ban is still a work in progress.

What the early evidence actually says

Underneath the enforcement headlines, the human data is genuinely mixed. A YouGov survey found cautious optimism, with around three in five Australians believing the ban has helped so far. Among parents, most noticed real gains. Roughly six in ten reported several positive changes, with more time spent in person, children who were more present at the dinner table and in many homes a warmer relationship between parent and child. Yet two in five parents also noticed costs, including children drifting to smaller and less regulated corners of the internet, a widening gap between families who can supervise closely and those who cannot and for some a loss of the creativity and peer support that online life had also carried. A study in JAMA Paediatrics offers a reminder of what may have been overlooked in the rush to protect our children. For many adolescents, moderate social media use appears to support wellbeing rather than erode it, because it holds connection, belonging and a place to be funny and awkward and fifteen. The problem was never that young people wanted these things. It is that the platforms were built to sell attention and a developing brain is no match for that design.

The question the ban cannot answer

Taking social media away creates space. Space to think, space to connect, but also space to disagree. Household rules of how the ban is enforced or navigated can open conversations where acknowledgement of loss, disengagement and isolation can be balanced with discussions around protection. The eSafety Commissioner has been careful to highlight that the deeper evaluation, the one measuring mental health and wellbeing rather than simply compliance, will only begin to be reported later this year. In other words, for now, parents are the experiment. A rule works best when it sits inside a relationship rather than in place of one. A teenager who loses an app and gains a parent who is genuinely curious about their world has made a good trade. A teenager who loses an app and gains only silence, or surveillance, has not.

The mirror we would rather not look in

There is a harder part, and it belongs to the adults. Most of us cannot convincingly ask an adolescent to put the phone down while our own eyes drift to a screen mid-sentence. The evening that we meant to spend present, that somehow dissolved into a scroll. Children learn what connection looks like by watching the people who raise them. If the ban prompts anything useful in the adult world, it may be the quiet question of what our own devices are costing us and whether the face our children see most often is a lit one, looking down.

At The Mind Clinic we work with adults across the full range of common difficulties: anxiety, depression, trauma, burnout, ADHD, autism and the harder adjustments of adult life, including the pressures of high responsibility roles. We offer couples therapy when two people have drifted into parallel lives and individual therapy for adults whose own relationship with screens, work or worry has quietly gone underground. This particular moment, where a rule has changed and a family is trying to find its footing, is exactly what our Growing Together program was built for. Two groups run side by side each week. In one, adolescents learn genuine skills for sitting with big feelings without a screen to numb them, led by psychologists Khiarn Raymond and Amy Regan. In the other, parents work with counsellor Sue Daniel on their own reactions and patterns, so the change happens on both sides of the bedroom door rather than only being demanded of the teenager. The aim is a shared language and a middle path, off the extremes and facing each other again. Dr Daniel Mullens, the clinic director and the wider team would be glad to have a brief, unhurried conversation with any family wondering how to navigate this new landscape. Reaching out is often the first and hardest step. It is also where things quietly begin to change.