A Father’s Reflection On Australia’s Impossible and Futile Under-16 Social-Media Ban: Lessons for Africa

As a father raising a four-year-old in my twilight years, I pay close attention to every global conversation shaping the world my son is inheriting. My mission, our mission, remains unchanged: to build a world fit for children, beginning with the one growing under my roof.

I have long expressed concern about how we introduce the digital ecosystem to our children. That conversation must begin with the enormous opportunities the digital world offers. Only within that context can we meaningfully address risks. The digital ecosystem is not evil. A machine that responds to human promptings, whether a car, a gun, a knife, or a social-media platform, cannot be inherently good or evil. The value system of the user is what gives it character.

Yes, people misuse digital platforms. Some exploit, some abuse, some defraud. But far more people are online doing legitimate, meaningful, life-giving work. It is within this balanced understanding that we must craft our approach to children’s digital participation. Just as in the physical world, we do not ban children from life. We place safeguards, boundaries, and guardrails, not prisons.

I addressed these issues extensively in last week’s LawGuard360® Explainer newsletter. If you would like a copy, email me at taiwoakinlami@lawguard360.com.

Reflecting on Australia’s under-16 social-media ban, a familiar line from King Sunny Adé comes to mind. Paraphrased, he warns of the futility of resisting what nature has already decided:

You cannot trap a bird by circling fire around the bush.
You cannot smoke a crab out of the deep by lighting a fire on the shore.

Some missions are doomed from the start because they deny the logic of nature itself.

Australia’s ban is one such mission.

A Critical Reflection on Australia’s Under-16 Social-Media Ban

Current age-based restrictions, which ban children from having accounts but do nothing to stop them from visiting, browsing, or consuming social-media content, create an illusion of safety rather than safety itself.

They force us to confront the real question:

Has risk been reduced, or has only the appearance of risk been reduced?

Children may lose the right to own accounts, but they can still visit, view, and consume content. It is like forbidding a child from buying items in a mall because they lack a credit card, yet allowing them to stroll through every store, absorb every display, and experience every temptation. We have restricted the form, not the substance.

Why a Ban Cannot Achieve True Online Safeguarding and Protection

1. Exposure does not require ownership.
   A child can consume digital content without logging in.
2. Restricting devices does not eliminate access.
   A child without a phone can still access the internet through peers’ devices, schools, libraries, and household computers.
3. The internet is no longer a place; it is an atmosphere.
   It surrounds childhood, education, communication, entertainment, identity, and community. You cannot isolate a child from the environment in which they are growing.

Thus, banning children from social media becomes symbolic at best and illusory at worst. It creates the appearance of safety without the substance of safety.

The Scandinavian Example: What the World’s Most Child-Centered Societies Actually Do

Recent headlines highlight Scandinavian countries’ strong school phone bans, and these policies are significant, but often misunderstood. What Sweden, Norway, and Denmark are banning is phones in school, not children’s access to social media in their everyday lives.

This distinction is central to understanding their philosophy.

1. Sweden: Strict School Bans, No Nationwide Social-Media Ban

Beginning autumn 2026, Sweden will enforce a nationwide ban on mobile phones during the entire school day for children aged 6–16. Phones are collected in the morning and returned after school to improve concentration and well-being.
Yet Sweden has no law banning under-16s from social media outside school. Their national strategy remains anchored in digital literacy, values formation, and parental partnership.

2. Denmark: School Bans and Ongoing Debates, Not a National Prohibition

Denmark has banned phones in elementary schools and after-school programs. A commission recommends children under 13 should not own smartphones. Discussions about restricting under-15 social-media access continue, but no nationwide ban exists.
Denmark’s position is clear: control the learning environment; equip the child for the digital world.

3. Norway: Effective School Ban, No Social-Media Ban

Norway already bars smartphones and tablets during school hours. Schools report better grades, improved health, and stronger peer interaction.
Yet Norway, like Sweden and Denmark, has no national ban on children’s social-media accounts.Norway’s approach focuses on digital resilience, not digital avoidance.

What This Means for the Global Debate

Scandinavia, arguably the most child-centered region in the world embraces a two-part model:

In school:

Protect the learning environment through strict, enforceable phone bans.

In life:

Prepare the child through values, discernment, digital literacy, and parental guidance.

Even Scandinavia, with all its social cohesion and institutional strength, does not attempt what Australia has done: a national ban on children’s presence on social media.

Their policies reinforce a timeless truth:

School is one environment we can control. Childhood is not.
We can regulate devices in structured settings, but we must equip the child for the unstructured reality beyond those settings.

Advocacy Cannot Replace Values

We must continue advocating for safer online spaces, holding platforms accountable, demanding ethical design, and insisting on Child Safeguarding and Protection protocols. But we must not be deceived: even the best regulations cannot replace the work that only families, culture, and values can do.

Advocacy reforms systems; values form and reform children.
Advocacy shapes the environment; values shape the human being navigating that environment.

A safer internet is desirable, but a stronger child is indispensable.

The Missing Conversation: What Happens Before a Child Receives a Phone?

Society argues endlessly about when a child should receive a phone, but rarely about what must exist inside the child before that moment.

Three foundations are essential:

1. Values
   The internal compass that governs choices when no adult is watching.
2. Discernment
   The ability to interpret digital experiences without absorbing them uncritically.
3. Boundaries
   The learned capacity to say no, disengage, and self-regulate in the face of digital pressure.

Without these internal structures, delaying phone access simply postpones exposure; it does not prepare the child for it.

Why Values Remain the Only Non-Negotiable Safeguard

Legislation cannot replace values.
Platform restrictions cannot replace values.

Device bans cannot replace values.

Values are the stability of a changing world.
They are the only shield a child carries everywhere, online, offline, into adolescence, and into adulthood.

The world has become a digital ecosystem. We cannot outlaw its existence. We cannot fence our children out of it.
But we can raise children who are strong on the inside, anchored in values, equipped with discernment, and guided by wisdom.

Conclusion

Banning children from social media is an impossible task.
Real safeguarding and protection come not from avoidance but from preparation.
Not from restriction, but from formation.
Not from isolation, but from inculcation.

The responsibility remains with parents, governments, institutions, and communities committed to raising children whose values equip them for the world they already inhabit, digital or otherwise.

Do have an INSPIRED week with the family.