Just over a year ago, Australians were given 24 hours’ notice to make a submission to the proposed legislation: Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill [Provisions].

I made a submission, opposing it, of course. I didn’t expect my efforts to make any difference, but I contributed anyway. Interestingly, my submission doesn’t appear in the list of the 118 submissions published. Only three submissions from individuals appear on the list, and mine isn’t among them. Makes you wonder… No matter – much of my content formed the basis of the submission from Australians for Science and Freedom, which does appear in the list.

Thinking about this now, knowing that only 118 people or organisations in the whole country thought it was worth commenting on, whether in favour, opposed, or possibly a bit of both, is pretty disheartening.

In a few days’ time, on December 10, 2025, the ban on social media for those under 16 years of age comes into effect. The consequences remain to be seen. But rest assured: in the future, anyone drawing a link between the legislation and negative phenomena will be pushed to the edge of the debate, if not completely censored. Proponents of the bill (now an Act) will likely be silent or wisely reluctant to attribute any positive phenomena to the legislation. Why risk a probe into any such claims? The legislation has served its purpose already – why disturb a sleeping dog?

Wouldn’t it be nice if we had an automatic repeal protocol should any piece of legislation fail to meet pre-determined hurdle measures aligned with the stated objectives of the legislation? Fail to reduce teen suicides by some given percentage? Repeal. Fail to reduce the number of minors coerced into sharing compromising pictures online? Repeal. If this were the case, this legislation would never have stood a chance. Its objectives, according to the explanatory memorandum, are so vague that a plausible metric would be impossible to describe:

The Bill contains a range of measures that amend the Online Safety Act 2021 (Online Safety Act) to enhance the online safety and wellbeing of young people.

The quote above is buried in the statement of compatibility with Human Rights, included in the Explanatory Memorandum. That’s the closest it gets to a statement of the objectives of the legislation. Many reasonably suspect the real objective of the Minimum Age legislation is to end anonymity on the internet, which is far more plausible.

The Explanatory Memorandum dives straight into the weeds, ignores the fundamental pretext, and starts discussing details like what age should apply, how they came to settle on 16 as the age cut-off, how great it is to be establishing ‘a new social norm’, and how the surveys showed this is what parents want.

Which is exactly what we ended up doing during the Covid abominations. Bickering over the right number of people to be allowed for Christmas dinner, and what were the right limits for our allowed daily exercise time and range from home.

At least we found out who our friends were during that trying time. And it wasn’t any of the institutional structures that we thought constituted our guarantee of fundamental freedoms, like freedom of speech ,freedom of movement, freedom of association, and freedom from medical experimentation. All such structures, from human rights bodies, to courts, to the churches, to Parliament itself, demonstrably failed to protect those freedoms.

Now we have the government, again, telling us what’s good for us. That booting kids off Facebook will be an unalloyed good.

Newsflash: the government is not your friend.

These are the same people who sent kids home from school and forced them online. Now they want to force them offline. As a pattern, this is easily recognisable as coercive control, a term much favoured at the moment. ‘Do this!’ ‘Now do the opposite!’ ‘Do the first thing, again!’ ‘Do the other thing, again!’ Do you remember ‘Masks aren’t necessary!’ ‘Masks are recommended!’ ‘Masks are mandatory!’ Same thing.

It’s a humiliation ritual dressed up as protection. It’s closer to a protection racket, actually.

‘Nice internet you’ve got there, be a shame if we stopped letting you use it.’ First they came for the under 16s, etc. The only ones it protects is the government and their collaborators, and it protects them from criticism.

And, they hope, revolution.

We shall see.