The government banned teenagers from social media and got exactly what prohibition always delivers

Spectator Australia · Zoe Booth · Sunday 12 April 2026

The government banned teenagers from social media and got exactly what prohibition always delivers

Albanese's flagship social media ban is already cracking as teenagers find workarounds, driving their online activity underground and beyond parental sight — the predictable result of prohibition logic applied to a generation that learned to code before it learned to drive.

Every generation's parents have tried to ban the thing teenagers do when nobody's watching. The Albanese mob just spent a legislative session discovering what every publican learned in 1905: if you lock the front door, they climb through the window, and now you can't see what they're drinking. The ban didn't remove the hazard — it removed the visibility, which was the only useful thing the platforms provided.

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