I just heard about this new policy from Australia where they’re blocking YouTube for anyone under 16. This seems like a pretty big deal since most kids use YouTube for everything from school projects to entertainment. I’m wondering how this will actually work in practice. Will parents need to verify their kids’ ages somehow? What about teenagers who are 14 or 15 and have been using YouTube for years already? And how will YouTube even enforce this rule? I’m curious if other countries might follow Australia’s lead on this. Has anyone else seen news about this policy? What do you think about governments restricting social media access based on age like this?
This’ll be a nightmare for families with multiple kids. Picture a 17-year-old and 15-year-old sharing devices - they’ll be constantly logging in and out just to switch users. And what happens when they travel overseas? Do the restrictions follow them, or can they suddenly access everything again? The Aussie government clearly didn’t think through the daily realities families face.
My colleague’s family moved from Sydney last year and we talked about this. She said they’re still figuring out enforcement, but it’ll use government digital ID systems for age verification. Here’s the weird part - existing accounts don’t get auto-suspended. There’s a grace period where families can apply for exemptions if they prove it’s for education. YouTube’s rolling out region-specific logins that check against Australian digital identity databases. Way more complex than the usual “enter your birthdate” thing most sites do. I’m worried about kids who actually need YouTube for school, especially in remote areas where online resources are everything. Plus you get these bizarre situations where a 15-year-old can’t watch educational videos but can still use other social platforms that aren’t restricted yet.
What bugs me most is this weird split between online and offline freedom. A 15-year-old can walk into any library and watch YouTube there, but not from home. Libraries and schools basically become loopholes, which kills the whole point. I’ve watched other countries try age verification - they always crash into the same problem. The tech isn’t ready yet. Australia’s volunteering to test broken systems. The real question isn’t if kids will get around it - they will. It’s whether the government doubles down with more restrictions when this fails, or admits they rushed into something way too complicated.
The timeline’s what kills me - they want platforms to have solid age verification ready in months when tech companies usually need years for major rollouts. Australia’s forcing YouTube to build infrastructure that doesn’t exist at this scale yet. I work in tech policy and the government keeps saying they want ‘privacy-preserving’ age verification, but that’s basically contradictory when you need to check someone’s real age against official records. The whole thing’s rushed, and there’s no backup plan if the verification systems fail or get hacked. Parents will deal with broken features and locked accounts while YouTube scrambles to meet deadlines. Other countries are watching this closely, but I bet they’ll wait to see how badly it crashes before copying it.
This reminds me of my dad blocking websites in the 90s - we figured out proxies in 5 minutes. Kids today are way more tech-savvy than politicians realize. VPNs are cheap and most teenagers already use them for other things anyway.