Name: Young Australian content creators brace for social media ban
Uploaded: 2025-11-24T17:23:14.566Z
Duration: 2 min 49 s
Description: Australia’s under-16 social media ban starts December 10, and young influencers like 15-year-old Dimi Heryxlim worry it could cut off the communities they’ve built online.

Australia’s under-16 social media ban starts December 10, and young influencers like 15-year-old Dimi Heryxlim worry it could cut off the communities they’ve built online.

Council of the City of Sydney

Australia is preparing to implement a social media ban for children under 16, effective December 10, which will require companies to block accounts of over a million minors and impose substantial penalties for non-compliance. Young content creators, such as 15-year-old Demi Herrick's Lim, and established YouTube channels like Lala, are expressing concerns about the impact on their businesses and audiences.

The inclusion of YouTube in the ban, following reports of harmful content exposure, has also raised worries about reputational damage and a potential decrease in advertisers and views. While teenagers may still access some content without accounts, the ban is expected to reduce the visibility and reach of young creators' posts due to changes in platform algorithms.

Young Australian content creators brace for social media ban

15-year-old Demi Herrick's Lim runs the House of Lim food stall in Sydney after school. As he cooks a signature chicken noodle dish, he makes sure to keep one of his most important tools nearby. Not his chopsticks or his pots and pans, it's his tripod and phone. He has amassed tens of thousands of views by posting vlogs of his routine running the kitchen. Basically, what I've been doing in the past few months is I upload my daily routines on social media so that many viewers on Instagram, TikTok can see what I do. They can connect with me personally. It's within their personal branding and they can come visit me here and there. I can build a community, hopefully, one day. I do find customers coming in and they're like, oh, I've seen you on TikTok. Some people even get photos with me here and there, selfies, but I do have, I can feel the impact of social media with my business, yes. But now with Australia's world-first social media ban for children younger than 16, set to take effect on December 10th, his plans will have to wait. I have a bit of concerns here and there, but I think I'm almost 16 anyway, so it's not going to be a huge impact. But for people that are still 12 years old, 13 years old, I've seen many curators at a very young age going to get banned and they're going to restart their whole journey again once they turn 16. I think that's a bit of a pain point. It's not just young content creators that are worried about the ban. Christina and Mark Harris make music for preschoolers on YouTube, and their Lala YouTube channel has 1.4 million subscribers. We don't know. We don't know what December 10 really means. I think for us in the preschool space, a lot of parents, children are watching on their parents' accounts. We think the bigger issue is what it actually does to YouTube as a brand for Australian families, and I think that's what we're mainly concerned about. Initially exempted from the ban, YouTube was added later at the urging of Australia's internet regulator, which said 37% of minors reported seeing harmful content on YouTube, the worst showing for a platform. But the Harris' are concerned by the lasting reputational damage from the inclusion of YouTube in the ban, and the implied notion that YouTube is harmful to children. It is that erosion of trust where people, parents might think, oh, YouTube, oh, social media, harmful, oh, let's not go anywhere near that, and I think that would be a great dimension, because there's a myriad of fantastic content there. Nine participants interviewed by Reuters in Australia's social media industry did not put a dollar figure on the ban's impact, but agreed it could lead to a drop in advertisers and views. The law requires companies to block the accounts of more than a million people under the cutoff age, punishing systemic breaches with penalties of around 32 million U.S. dollars. While teenagers can still watch YouTube without an account, the site's algorithm will fail to drive traffic to popular posts, reducing views.

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