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Meta, TikTok, YouTube, And Snapchat Not Complying With Child Social Media Ban In Australia 

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In December 2025, Australia enacted a law that banned kids under the age of 16 from having accounts on social media. Now, the continent is considering legal action against platforms Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube over allegations that they’re not making enough of an effort to keep children off of the sites. 

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Experts have stated, according to reports, that Australian courts can decide what steps the platforms can reasonably take in order to meet the requirements of the law. 

Julie Inman Grant, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, released a compliance report that demands 10 platforms remove all Australian account-holders younger than the age of 16. 

With the law enacted, 5 million Australian accounts have been deactivated. However, a significant number of Australian children continued to maintain their accounts or created new accounts and bypassed each platform’s age assurance systems, according to the report. 

Inman Grant said in a statement her office had “significant concerns about the compliance of half of those 10 platforms.” Grant’s office was gathering evidence against five platforms that haven’t taken “reasonable steps” to prevent children from having accounts.

Courts could potentially order fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($33 million) for systemic failures to comply. eSafety is the power deciding on whether to initiate court action against any of the platforms by the middle of the year. 

Reddit, X (formerly Twitter), Kick, Threads, and Twitch are age-registricted platforms that aren’t under investigation. Communications Minister Anika Wells stated that the five main platforms being looked into are allegedly not complying with the Australian law on purpose. 

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“Social media platforms are choosing to do the absolute bare minimum because they want these laws to fail.”

“This is the world-leading law. We’re the first in the world to do it. Of course they don’t want these laws to work because they want that to be a chilling effect on the dozen countries that have come out since Dec. 10 to follow Australia’s step,” Wells told reporters. 

eSafety has emphasized “poor practices” from these platforms. For example, they all allow unlimited attempts for a user to pass their age assurance methods, and even prompt the user to try to pass the age assurance methods. 

Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, told AP that they were “committed” to complying with Australia’s social media ban. “We’ve also been clear that accurately determining age online is a challenge for the whole industry.”

Snapchat’s parent company, Snap Inc., said that they have locked 450,000 accounts to align with the law and are continuously doing so daily. “Snapchat remains fully committed to implementing reasonable steps under the legislation and supporting its underlying goal of improving online safety for young Australians,” they said in a statement. 

Lisa Given, information sciences expert at RMIT University in Melbourne, stated: 

“If a tech company has said: look, we put in age assurance, we’ve done all these steps. That’s reasonable. Even though the aged assurance technologies are flawed, whose fault is that? Should they be held accountable for a piece of technology that is not 100% and likely not going to be 100% foolproof any time soon?” 

“That’s really the crux of it: what the courts will deem reasonable,” she said.

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Mark Zuckerberg Defends Meta In Landmark Trial Regarding Social Media Addiction 

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently testified during a landmark trial in Los Angeles Superior Court regarding social media addiction and safety, particularly in teenagers and kids.

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Snapchat Launches AI Chatbot Powered by ChatGPT

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Snapchat is launching its own artificial intelligence chatbot powered by OpenAI’s viral ChatGPT. The feature, called My AI, will be available to Snapchat Plus subscribers starting this week.

In a blog post, Snapchat shared how My AI can help subscribers with various tasks and assist them in their day-to-day activities.

“My AI can recommend birthday gift ideas for your BFF, plan a hiking trip for a long weekend, suggest a recipe for dinner, or even write a haiku about cheese for your cheddar-obsessed pal.”

Snapchat cautioned, however, that the chatbot is “experimental” and may respond in unexpected ways.

“As with all AI-powered chatbots, My AI is prone to hallucination and can be tricked into saying just about anything. Please be aware of its many deficiencies, and sorry in advance!”

An AI hallucination is a term for when an AI presents false facts as the truth. In other words, it may confidently output completely made-up answers, leading to misinformation. At times, the answers may even be nonsensical.

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In an email to CNET, a Snapchat representative described how the company customized the latest version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology for its platform.

“My AI was trained to have a unique tone and personality that plays into Snapchat’s core values around friendship, learning, and fun. It has been trained to adhere to our trust and safety guidelines.”

The company’s community guidelines prohibit the chatbot from responding with explicit, inflammatory or violent content.

Snapchat will store all conversations between subscribers and their My AI to review and help improve product experience. Users can also submit direct feedback to Snapchat by pressing and holding any message. Snapchat advised users not to “share any secrets with My AI” and to not rely on it for advice.

Currently, the feature is only available to Snapchat Plus members. However, in an interview with the Verge, Snapchat founder and CEO Evan Spiegel said the goal is to make the feature available to all of Snapchat’s 750 million monthly users.

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Snapchat is the latest in a string of companies to integrate artificial intelligence into their platforms. Google recently revealed its ChatGPT contender Bard. The chatbot infamously made a factual error during an ad demo, costing Google a $100 billion drop in market value.

The same week, Microsoft announced it would integrate ChatGPT into its search engine Bing.

Since Snapchat is a messaging service, Spiegel believes it is uniquely positioned to create a personable chatbot. Spiegel told the Verge, “The big idea is that in addition to talking to our friends and family every day, we’re going to talk to AI every day.”

Unlike other AI chatbot integrations on platforms, Snapchat’s My AI interface suggests the chatbot is intended to be more than just a productivity tool. The chatbot has an avatar, and its “user profile” resembles a regular Snapchat friend profile. Users can even change the chat’s wallpaper.

The current price for a subscription to Snapchat Plus is $3.99 per month.

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GLAAD Report Shows Social Media Giants Aren’t Doing Enough To Protect LGBTQ Users

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When it comes to protecting groups that are vulnerable to slurs and harassment, a new report shows major social media platforms are falling short.

According to advocate group GLAAD’s Social Media Safety Index (SMSI), which assesses and provides recommendations for the five major platforms (TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter), all platforms scored below 50% out of a possible 100%.

The SMSI grades platforms on 12 LGBTQ-specific factors, which include gender pronouns on user profiles, third-party advertisers, content moderator training, actions to restrict harmful content, and stopping the removal of or demonetizing legitimate LGBTQ content.

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Coming in the highest was Instagram (48%), while TikTok came in last with 43%. Twitter scored the most zeros across the 12 categories with five. How LGBTQ members are received on social media plays a big role in the real world, GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis explained.

“This type of rhetoric and “content” that dehumanizes LGBTQ people has real-world impact. These malicious and false narratives, relentlessly perpetuated by right-wing media and politicians, continue to negatively impact public understanding of LGBTQ people — driving hatred, and violence, against our community,” Ellis said in a letter.

Ellis noted that the strategy of using misunderstanding and hate to help support legislation by politicians, which have proposed 325 anti-LGBTQ bills since the start of 2022, is something “we’ve seen across history.”

The SMSI grades line up with how users feel. A survey by GLAAD found that 84% of LGBTQ adults agree there aren’t enough protections on social media to prevent discrimination, harassment, or disinformation, while 40% of LGBTQ adults and 49% of transgender and nonbinary people don’t feel safe on social media.

The five platforms did excel in certain areas. Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram) was just one of two that disclosed information on the training of content moderators while having a clear policy on prohibiting LGBTQ-offensive advertising.

GLAAD also highlighted TikTok and Twitter’s feature of preventing users from misgendering or deadnaming nonbinary and transgender people and recommended all platforms follow that innovative lead.

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“This recommendation remains an especially high priority in our current landscape where anti-trans rhetoric and attacks are so prevalent, vicious, and harmful,” GLAAD’s senior director of social media safety, Jenni Olson, said.

However, those positives were overshadowed by a sea of negatives that ultimately resulted in failing grades. Most were docked for their policies’ limitations and enforcement, while GLAAD explained TikTok was lacking “adequate transparency” in several areas.

“The company currently does not disclose options for users to control the company’s collection of information related to their sexual orientation and gender identity,” the report said, recommending it should give users control over their own data and diversify their workforce.

“Notably, TikTok was the only company that did not disclose any information on steps it takes to diversify its workforce.”

Ellis called the companies’ performances “unacceptable.” “At this point, after their years of empty apologies and hollow promises, we must also confront the knowledge that social media platforms and companies are prioritizing profit over LGBTQ safety and lives.”

The safety of social media is particularly important when considering the vulnerable states of young LGBTQ users. According to The Trevor Project, 45% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered committing suicide in the last year, while 73% reported experiencing symptoms of anxiety.

Snapchat Fights Drug Dealing With Automated Drug Detection System On App 

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Snapchat announced that they will be making a greater effort to combat drug dealing on the platform. The announcement is partially due to the increased amount of drug-related deaths among US high school and college-aged students. 

Snapchat announced that they have adopted improved automated drug detection systems as well as enhancing partnerships with law enforcement. The app will also now have a portal that can be used for educating users on the dangers of drugs. 

“Our position on this has always been clear: we have absolutely zero tolerance for drug dealing on Snapchat. We have a unique opportunity to use our voice, technology and resources to help address this scourge, which threatens the lives of our community members.”

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The increased security efforts come after the CDC warned of a major spike of drug overdoses in 2021, mainly driven by fentanyl; a cheap synthetic opioid that’s 100 times more potent than heroin, and is often mixed with counterfeit pills that young people buy through social media. 

In 2020 fentanyl fatalities rose by 32% when compared to 2019; more than 93,000 deaths. Individuals aged 24 or younger have seen a 50% increase in drug deaths as well.

“Every drug you try now is a game of Russian roulette,” Shabbir Safdar, director of the Partnership for Safe Medicines, a non-profit fighting pharmaceutical counterfeits, said. 

A recent study from the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) found that pills labeled as Oxycontin, Percocet, Xanax or Adderall are readily available on platforms like Snapchat, Instagram, and Craigslist. 

Within the past year Snapchat claims it has increased its proactive detection of drug sales by 390%; increasing security efforts by 50% within the last quarter alone. When Snapchat’s systems detect drug dealing activity on the app the account is automatically banned and the creator is blocked from creating new accounts on the platform. 

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The company has also increased their partnerships with law enforcement and improved on response times to law enforcement inquiries by 85% within the past year. 

Snapchat said it is “working with experts to continually update the list of slang and drug-related terms blocked from search results on Snapchat. Other platforms should also take measures to put a stop to the massive rise in online drug dealing. This is not just a Snapchat problem,” said Christine Elgersma, a senior editor at children’s safety non-profit Common Sense Media.

At a 2021 congressional hearing, Instagram executive Adam Mosseri had to answer questions regarding drug dealing on social media.

“Why are children’s accounts even allowed to search for drug content to begin with, much less allowed to do so in a way that leads them to a drug dealer in two clicks?” asked the Republican senator Mike Lee of Utah.

“Accounts selling drugs or any other regulated goods are not allowed on the platform. The app uses technology to proactively take down a huge number of drug-related posts, Mosseri responded.

Experts Worried About Rise Of ‘Zoom Dysmorphia’ As Pandemic Continues

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Experts are worried that spending too much time staring at ourselves in “funhouse mirror” sizes on video-conferencing calls will begin to distort our self images.

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Study Claims Social Media Harms Teens’ Health by Interrupting Positive Activities

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There’s no question that frequent social media use has become a virtual cultural necessity, especially among young people. Social networks that were for millennia supported by face-to-face interpersonal relationships now exist mostly online, and such a drastic shift has raised concerns about how social media use impacts mental health. The science on this subject is far from settled; while some studies show that social media can actually improve teens’ sense of social engagement, others have found that young people are feeling increasingly isolated and depressed, likely in part as a result of distorted perceptions of others’ lives precipitated by social media. Amidst this controversy, a new study, published on Tuesday in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, examined the relationship between mental health and social media and found that it is more complicated than commonly assumed.

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The study was impressive in scope, as it involved interviews with nearly 10,000 English children between the ages of 13 and 16. Researchers found that social media can have a particularly negative effect on girls’ mental health, not only because it increases their likelihood of being victimized by bullying, but also because it gets in the way of sleep and physical exercise. According to the researchers, social media itself does not harm young people’s development, but an overuse of online social networks can result in harmful consequences. As such, the researchers believe that strategies meant to decrease teens’ social media use may not be effective alone, and that strategies designed to reduce cyberbullying and improve sleep and physical health are likely more effective. The study also found that while boys also experience mental health challenges, these challenges are generally not linked with social media use, suggesting that more research on how social media affects boys’ mental health is needed.

The study’s finding of association between frequent social media use and mental health problems matches other research that has been conducted on the subject, such as a study published last year that found a link between the amount of time teens spend looking at screens and their probability of having depression. That being said, psychologists have stressed that the content of one’s social media experience is likely more predictive of mental health problems than frequency of social media use by itself, noting that there are many ways social media can promote mental health, such as strengthening social ties and exposing young people to others’ points of view.

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Other studies have corroborated the finding that girls are more strongly negatively affected by social media than boys. A study published in The Lancet found that girls who used social media for more than five hours a day were 50% more likely to have depressive symptoms than girls who used social media less frequently, whereas boys who used social media for the same amount of time per day only had a 35% increase in depressive symptoms. That being said, neither study can prove that social media use causes depression, as it may instead be the case that people who already have depression are simply more likely to use social media excessively than people who do not. According to this study, girls were both more likely to report depressive symptoms and to use social media more than three hours per day.

While more research needs to be done to determine the reason for this gender gap, psychologists have suggested that it may have to do with the different types of content boys and girls engage with online. Girls are more likely than boys to focus on their physical appearance when using social media, which might mean girls are more likely to develop body image issues by comparing their appearance with others. Accordingly, Instagram, which is an app that in large part revolves around sharing pictures of oneself, has been found to be the most detrimental social networking service for young people’s mental health, followed by Snapchat, which is used in a similar way. For their part, Instagram has taken steps to try to reduce the negative psychological effects of its platform, starting with hiding the number of people who have liked a user’s picture to prevent social comparison that can leave people feeling isolated and inadequate.