Anika Wells is speaking on the government’s decision to add more sites to the social media ban, which will now include Reddit and Kick. (The Sizzle’s and Crikey’s Cam Wilson has been very good on this ban from the start, if you are looking for someone to follow on this sort of reporting).

Asked about kids already talking about how they will get around it, Wells says:

I’ve got lots to say about this. Kids will be kids. There will be kids today that manage to procure themselves alcohol, despite the fact that it is against the law to buy alcohol if you’re under 18 in Australia.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have a law preventing under-18s from buying alcohol in Australia. This is about a cultural change and moving people away from having every single interaction they have as a 13-year-old, 12-year-old, 8-year-old, being online and being in real life, trying to give them 36 months back to develop those relationships and develop that resilience themselves before giving them the opportunity of having a social media platform.

I think – I don’t know if you want to speak to the ins and outs about how people will get around it – but I’ve been enjoying some of the social media content talking about how they are under 16 and don’t like the laws and how they’re going to get around it, therefore identifying themselves as someone who is under 16 and their accounts will need to be deactivated.

When TikTok went offline for 24 hours in the States, people tried all kinds of methods to get around that, VPNs, etc, and were in the vast majority, unsuccessful.