Australia’s under-16 social media ban starts December 10, and young influencers like 15-year-old Dimi Heryxlim worry it could cut off the communities they’ve built online. - REUTERS
00:00Fifteen-year-old Demi Harixlim runs the House of Lim food stall in Sydney after school.
00:06As he cooks a signature chicken noodle dish, he makes sure to keep one of his most important tools nearby.
00:12Not his chopsticks or his pots and pans, it's his tripod and phone.
00:17He has amassed tens of thousands of views by posting vlogs of his routine running the kitchen.
00:22Basically what I've been doing in the past few months is I upload my daily routines on social media
00:27so that many viewers on Instagram, TikTok can see what I do.
00:30They can connect with me personally.
00:32It's with the personal branding and they can come visit me here and there.
00:35I can build a community hopefully one day.
00:37I do find customers coming in and they're like, oh, I've seen you on TikTok.
00:41Some people even get photos with me here and there, selfies.
00:44But I can feel the impact of social media with my business, yes.
00:48But now with Australia's world-first social media ban for children younger than 16,
00:53set to take effect on December 10th, his plans will have to wait.
00:56I feel I have a bit of concerns here and there, but I think I'm almost 16 anyway.
01:02So it's not going to be a huge impact.
01:04But for people that are still 12 years old, 13 years old, I've seen many curators at a very young age
01:09going to get banned and they're going to restart their whole journey again once they turn 16.
01:13I think that's a bit of a pain point.
01:15It's not just young content creators that are worried about the ban.
01:19Tina and Mark Harris make music for preschoolers on YouTube.
01:22And their Lala YouTube channel has 1.4 million subscribers.
01:26We don't know.
01:27We don't know what December 10 really means.
01:30I think for us in the preschool space, a lot of parents, children are watching on their parents' accounts.
01:37We think the bigger issue is what it actually does to YouTube as a brand for Australian families.
01:44And I think that's what we're mainly concerned about.
01:48Initially exempted from the ban, YouTube was added later at the urging of Australia's internet regulator,
01:53which said 37 percent of minors reported seeing harmful content on YouTube, the worst showing for a platform.
02:00But the Harris's are concerned by the lasting reputational damage from the inclusion of YouTube in the ban and the implied notion that YouTube is harmful to children.
02:09It is that erosion of trust where people, parents might think, YouTube, social media, harmful.
02:15Let's not go anywhere near that.
02:16And I think that would be a great shame because there's a myriad of fantastic content there.
02:20Nine participants interviewed by Reuters in Australia's social media industry did not put a dollar figure on the ban's impact,
02:27but agreed it could lead to a drop in advertisers and views.
02:30The law requires companies to block the accounts of more than a million people under the cutoff age,
02:35punishing systemic breaches with penalties of around 32 million U.S. dollars.
02:41While teenagers can still watch YouTube without an account,
02:44the site's algorithm will fail to drive traffic to popular posts, reducing views.
02:49So thank you very much
02:52for your full oversight,
02:53and we are working better than our schools in the UK.
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