Barnaby Joyce has criticised Australia’s social media ban for children under 16, in his latest interview on Sunrise.
The One Nation MP argued that the ban focuses on the wrong issue, saying that the problem lies in “the product that’s on the platform rather than the platform itself.”
This comes after Meta confirmed it has shut down about 500,000 teen accounts across Instagram and Facebook since the ban came into force in December 2025.
Joyce added that banning the platforms is “wrong” and will “do more social harm than social good”.
He argued a more targeted approach should be taken to ban specific harmful behaviours, like fining children for actions like creating “nude images” using tools such as AI assistant Grok instead of banning them from X altogether.
News Corp national education editor Susie O’Brien also shared her thoughts on the social media ban, telling Sunrise on Monday that the early numbers suggest the policy is working.
“I think the real impact is going to be kids coming through who can’t get on it in the first place,” she said.
“That’s quite a substantial figure. And I think now what we want to see is the million estimated users of Snapchat, young people on Snapchat, which is really where they’re doing a lot of their communication.”
While she acknowledged that more data is required, she maintained the policy is meeting its core objective.
“The whole ban was about getting kids off it and this suggests it has been working,” she said.
She agreed with Joyce and said that the responsibility for keeping children safe online lies with social media companies themselves, instead of the children or their parents.
Image: Sunrise
