September 28, 2026 10:33AM # The Limited Efficacy of Social Media Bans for Teens By [Jeffrey Miron](https://www.cato.org/people/jeffrey-miron) --- SHARE Listen to this article Generated with [ ElevenLabs](https://elevenlabs.io/) AI technology. Loading the [Elevenlabs Text to Speech](https://elevenlabs.io/text-to-speech) AudioNative Player... The [Jonathan Haidt-pilled](https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/take-action) among us shouldn’t celebrate Australia’s [social media ban](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyp9d3ddqyo) for teens just yet. [New evidence](https://www.cato.org/research-briefs-economic-policy/australias-social-media-ban-did-not-change-norms) suggests that the ban has neither gotten teens off social media nor changed the culture around its use. The ban > imposed few practical costs on teenagers who wanted to continue using social media: 75 percent described circumventing the restrictions as easy or very easy. … Among teenagers still using banned platforms, 52 percent gave a social reason, most often that their friends were still on the platforms or that they feared missing out. The collective action problem remains, and > the existing adherence rate may not last. On average, affected teenagers said that roughly two-thirds of their peers would have to adhere before they would adhere themselves. Yet they believed that only about 30 percent of their peers were adhering, close to our estimated rate of 27 percent. … Unless enforcement or social norms changed, we therefore expected adherence to decrease rather than increase. Alternative > approaches include coordinated time limits, … campaigns that make nonuse visible and socially rewarded, incentives for reduced social media use, and organized activities that replace time and interaction lost online. Of course, teens will likely find reasons and ways to circumvent these policies as well. *Cross-posted from* [*Substack*](https://jeffreymiron.substack.com/p/immigration-restrictions-cause-enforcement)*.* ##### Related Tags [Free Speech and Civil Liberties](https://www.cato.org/free-speech-civil-liberties), [Regulation](https://www.cato.org/regulatory-studies), [Technology and Privacy](https://www.cato.org/technology-privacy) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).