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Children, Schools, and Youth Policy

Harm Blindness in Digital Child Protection Policy: A Systematic Stakeholder, Sentinel and Legal Analysis of Australia's Under-16 Social Media Ban

Publisher: Real Safety AI Foundation

Conference paper.

Pages
6
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Abstract

On 10 December 2025, Australia became the first nation to enforce a blanket prohibition on social media access for users under 16. The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024 exposes platforms to civil penalties of up to AUD 49.5 million for systemic failures to prevent underage account creation, and has reshaped the regulatory conversation in the UK, EU, Malaysia and South Africa, where the Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies has indicated similar measures are under active consideration. This paper argues that the Australian ban is not merely an ethically costly policy; it is a legally fragile one. Using the Harm Blindness Framework (HBF) to identify stakeholder damage, the Paediatric Sentinel Effect in Algorithmic Harm to explain why children’s experiences predict adult harms, and a doctrinal proportionality analysis grounded in South African constitutional law and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and General comment No. 25, we demonstrate that the ban fails on its

Plain language slides

First slide of the plain language summary of Harm Blindness in Digital Child Protection Policy: A Systematic Stakeholder, Sentinel and Legal Analysis of Australia's Under-16 Social Media BanOpen the 17-slide summary (PDF)

Suggested citation

Gilly, Travis, and Rene Mattheus. "Harm Blindness in Digital Child Protection Policy: A Systematic Stakeholder, Sentinel and Legal Analysis of Australia's Under-16 Social Media Ban." Real Safety AI Foundation Conference Paper, n.d.. https://realsafetyai.org/research/k5szfn/

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This paper is also posted on SSRN.

SSRN version

References (8)

This list was read from the PDF text. Where the two differ, the PDF is correct.

  1. Commonwealth of Australia. (2025). Age assurance technology trial: Final report. Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts.
  2. Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 (South Africa).
  3. Information Regulator (South Africa). (2021). Guidance note on processing of personal information of children.
  4. South African Schools Act 84 of 1996.
  5. UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. (2021). General comment No. 25 (2021) on children's rights in relation to the digital environment (CRC/C/GC/25). https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/general-comments-and-recommendations/general-comment-no-25-2021-childrens-rights-relation
  6. Wall, J. (2008). Human rights in light of childhood. International Journal of Children’s Rights, 16(4), 523–543. https://doi.org/10.1163/157181808X312122
  7. Wall, J. (2010). Ethics in light of childhood. Georgetown University Press.
  8. Young-Bruehl, E. (2012). Childism: Confronting prejudice against children. Yale University Press.

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