As a mum of two, I’m relieved. I know social media is a dangerous minefield for growing minds that are easily influenced.

My kids are five and eight, so they’re young enough to benefit from this without the ban affecting them too much. The only thing my eight-year-old currently accesses is YouTube. He loves watching gamer vlogs, but we have to monitor his activity closely because even with the age-restricted settings, it’s still not safe enough.

I support this decision overall, but I do feel for the teenagers whose whole social lives are currently wired into these apps (and their parents). I also feel for the young creators who’ve worked hard to build their followings and will feel robbed. Logging off is a big ask, even if it’s the right one.

Once I finished researching all of this as a mother, I switched to my marketing brain. Does this affect my work? My clients? Children are not my audience and my clients don’t target them either.

But just to be sure…

Let’s Check In With Australia

Australia brought in the same ban back in December, so we get to see this experiment play out there 12 months before it starts here.

I read about an Australian influencer family that uprooted from Perth to London last year to escape the ban, so their 14-year-old could keep creating (BBC). I feel for them right now, given this recent announcement!

Here are some of the other things that seem to be playing out there 6 months in, and what each one could mean for us as marketers in the UK.

Kids Are Still Online

Six months into Australia’s ban, plenty of teens are already back on the platforms they were supposedly blocked from, using VPNs and other workarounds (CNBC).

This is a generation that has grown up on tech, so of course, many of them are finding ways to stay social.

They don’t switch off and go away. They fight back. They scatter, and they get harder to see and harder to track and measure.

Age Checks Affect Everyone

To keep under-16s out, platforms have to verify all of us. In Australia, that has meant facial estimation through selfies, uploaded ID documents or linked bank details (CNBC).

In practical terms for marketers, this means more friction. Every sign-up, every gated download, every new follower has to bypass a hurdle, and friction costs conversions.

It’s worth auditing now where you ask people to create accounts or hand over details, because those steps could become more onerous.

Platforms Push Back

Reddit launched a legal challenge against the Australian government, arguing the ban is ineffective and restricts young people (CNBC). Meta, meanwhile, is pushing for age checks to sit at the app store level instead.

YouTube has already released a statement about the UK ban, saying: “YouTube is a vital resource for young people, educators and parents. Blanket bans push kids out of such curated, supervised, beneficial experiences and towards anonymous, less safe services.” (Guardian)

Expect the rules to shift, wobble and get appealed for years, so treat any strategy you build around the ban as provisional rather than fixed.

Your Data Gets Messier

When a whole cohort drops out of the targeting and analytics pool, it thins the data. At the same time, the teens who borrow a parent’s or sibling’s login pollute the age data you do have.

The upshot is that the 40-something woman engaging with your post might actually be her 13-year-old son. We’ll need to read our audience insights with more suspicion than we did before.

The Smart Move

This is likely to be a messy switch-off. The smart move is to watch Australia closely, treat your plans as provisional, and start adapting now.

Pour your energy into the channels you control, your email list first, so that when a platform changes the rules, you have some insurance.

Is there something I’ve missed? I’d love to know how you think this will affect us.