Understanding the Limits of Social Media Bans
What limits the effectiveness of social media bans? When access restrictions can be circumvented, their success may depend on the social incentives to adhere, since leaving a platform is costly when peers remain. We examine this coordination problem in Australia, which in December 2025 became the first country to ban under-16s from major social media platforms. Surveying Australian teenagers four months after implementation, we found that approximately 25% of 14–15-year-olds adhered to the ban. Yet teenagers reported requiring two out of three peers to adhere before adhering themselves, and those adhering were perceived to be less popular. These findings suggest that adherence may be difficult to sustain when it is below the level needed to make it socially attractive. Consistent with this mechanism, adherence fell to about 5% two months later. Our results highlight a limit of bans: formal rules may struggle to change behavior when social forces favor non-adherence. Policies seeking to reduce teenage social media use may therefore need to address social norms alongside platform and user incentives.
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Copy CitationLeonardo Bursztyn, Angela L. Duckworth, Rafael Jiménez-Durán, Aaron Leonard, Filip Milojević, Christopher Roth, and Cass R. Sunstein, "Understanding the Limits of Social Media Bans," NBER Working Paper 35162 (2026), https://doi.org/10.3386/w35162.Download Citation
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