The Australian government has told the High Court it did not wait for scientific consensus before banning under-16s from social media, acknowledging in a formal legal filing that the causal link between platform use and mental health harm remains scientifically contested. Yet it insists the policy was justified anyway, arguing that the mere existence of “credible risks” - including addictive design patterns, disrupted sleep and worsening anxiety - was reason enough to act pre-emptively rather than wait for proof.
The admission came in the government's defence against a challenge brought by Reddit, one of two cases against the ban expected to be heard jointly before the end of 2026. Reddit's submission argued the law burdens the implied freedom of political communication while doing little to address the underlying harms it claims to target, noting that several platforms were excluded from the ban altogether and that many of the design features at issue remain accessible to users without accounts. For readers trying to understand how such restrictions interact with everyday browsing habits and privacy tools, including guidance such as how to configure a VPN on Windows 11, the case also raises broader questions about how age-verification and content rules might reshape ordinary internet use well beyond Australia's borders.
Reddit also pointed to the number of children reported to have kept existing accounts or opened new ones since the ban took effect in December last year, suggesting the policy has not achieved what it set out to do. The company argued that if the government genuinely wanted to tackle harmful content reaching young people, it could do so directly through its own proposed digital duty of care legislation, rather than through a blanket prohibition.
A Precautionary Policy, Not a Proven One
The government's defence leans heavily on the precautionary principle - the idea that regulators need not wait for definitive proof of harm before intervening, provided the risks are plausible and the potential consequences serious. “Uncertainty about causation should not delay action to protect young people,” the submission states, framing the ban as a protective measure rather than an evidence-based remedy. This is a notable shift in posture: rather than defending the ban as a response to established science, Canberra is now defending the legitimacy of acting under scientific uncertainty itself.
That argument cuts both ways. Precautionary regulation has long been used in areas such as food safety and environmental policy, where delaying action until harm is conclusively proven could be costly or irreversible. Critics, however, note that applying the same logic to something as complex as adolescent mental health and digital behaviour risks conflating correlation with causation, and could set a precedent for broad restrictions justified by plausibility alone rather than demonstrated outcomes.
Duty of Care as a Parallel Path
Perhaps the most striking element of the filing is the government's claim that its proposed digital duty of care legislation - which would let users opt out of algorithmic feeds and other engagement-driving features - would, if properly applied, produce the same practical effect as the ban itself. In other words, the government is arguing that two very different regulatory models, one a blanket restriction and the other a consent-based opt-out framework, could converge on an identical outcome for under-16 users.
This raises an obvious question the court will likely probe: if a less restrictive duty-of-care model can achieve the same protective effect, why is an outright ban necessary at all? The government's answer rests on enforcement numbers it says already demonstrate impact, including the removal of several million accounts shortly after the ban came into force and tens of thousands of account suspensions reported by Reddit alone between December and March. Canberra has since strengthened the eSafety Commissioner's enforcement powers and significantly raised the maximum penalties platforms face for non-compliance.
Global Stakes Beyond Australia
The case has drawn attention well beyond Australian shores. NetChoice, the US industry body representing major platforms including Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, X and YouTube, is seeking to be heard alongside the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group that has historically opposed age-verification mandates on free-expression and privacy grounds. Their involvement signals that the High Court's ruling could influence how other democracies weigh child safety against digital rights, free expression and the practical limits of enforcing age restrictions online.