Commonwealth Concedes Teen Social Media Ban Curbs Political Speech, Defends It Anyway

The Commonwealth walked into the High Court on Wednesday and admitted the obvious: its teen social media ban does get in the way of young people's political speech. Barrister Stephen Lloyd, SC, told the court the restriction was real but only an 'indirect and modest' burden on teens' implied constitutional right to freedom of political communication. Protecting kids from online harm, he argued, is worth that price.

Lloyd laid out the case for the ban in stark terms, pointing to addictive and harmful platform features he said hurt teenagers' sleep and attention spans, foster depression and suicidal ideation, intensify ADHD symptoms and worsen eating disorders. Children are especially vulnerable to psychological manipulation tools like algorithm-recommended content and endless scroll, he said. Reddit's own suggested safeguards — including nudging users to log off after an hour — wouldn't do the job.

Reddit's barrister, Perry Herzfeld, SC, pushed back hard. He said the government's idea of a children-only Reddit would still cut teens off from the main platform, and that child-friendly accounts built inside Reddit — minus the features the government calls harmful — could work instead. Herzfeld also pointed to the looming digital duty of care, arguing it could protect kids online without touching political communication at all.

The two-day contest is the first major legal test of Anthony Albanese's teen social media ban, the centrepiece of Labor's digital safety push. The law has drawn fire from the Coalition, the Trump administration and social media giants, who call it an attack on free speech. NSW Libertarian MP John Ruddick, president of the Digital Freedom Project, which is party to the case, said Tuesday the prime minister had built a pattern of censorship across the ban, the proposed digital duty of care and hate speech reforms.

Reddit had argued a day earlier that harmful features should be banned rather than accounts, and questioned whether age verification works — calling facial-identification technology imprecise. Lloyd rejected that on Wednesday, saying Reddit had produced no evidence on how many people were wrongly flagged as underage. He also brushed off the eSafety commissioner's early description of a ban as a 'blunt' instrument, insisting the age rules were built to limit exposure to harmful features.

Pressed on whether social media is a key communication tool for children, Lloyd said it simply isn't known whether teens are engaging in political discourse or checking in on their favourite movie star. Teens can still take part in political debate, he argued — browsing sites without logging in, using messaging and gaming platforms that aren't banned, or through a parent's account. The court's ruling will decide how far the ban can reach.