You've Been Murdoched: Australia’s Teen Ban Offers a Warning for Europe | TechPolicy.PressPerspective<br>You've Been Murdoched: Australia’s Teen Ban Offers a Warning for Europe<br>Caroline De Cock / Mar 12, 2026Shutterstock

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On March 5, the European Commission convened the first closed-door meeting of its special panel on child safety online, opened by President von der Leyen herself. Its recommendations, due by summer, will determine whether the EU should move toward harmonized age restrictions across twenty-seven member states. With France, Germany, Spain, Greece, and Denmark all mulling over national bans and the UK debating further age-restriction measures alongside its Online Safety Act framework, the cascade is accelerating.<br>Before Brussels follows Canberra's example, it is worth asking how Australia got there — and who was actually driving the machine, and why.<br>The campaign that became a law<br>The timeline of Australia's ban for under-16s is not subtle. In March 2024, Meta declined to renew its commercial agreements with Australian news outlets under the News Media Bargaining Code, a mechanism that had generated over $200 million for publishers in the preceding three years. The "Let Them Be Kids" campaign launched by News Corp Australia across its national mastheads followed closely on the heels of that decision, collecting over 54,000 petition signatures. Nova Radio, owned by Lachlan Murdoch's Illyria Pty Ltd, ran a simultaneous campaign declaring a ban would win the vote of every parent.<br>By November 2024, legislation had passed both chambers of parliament after a committee inquiry of three hours, following a 24-hour public submission window. Prime Minister Albanese thanked News Corp by name in his announcement: "I do want to single out News Corp for the campaign that they've run, Let Them Be Kids."<br>The remark was striking. A head of government credited a media company, publicly and by name, when announcing legislation affecting millions of children. The legislation that the media company had campaigned for. The legislation whose primary targets were the digital competitors of that same company.<br>Not a conspiracy but commercial logic<br>This is not a conspiracy. It is commercial logic operating in plain sight. Social media platforms have disrupted the legacy media business model: advertising revenue that once flowed to newspapers and television now flows to Meta, TikTok, and YouTube. A law compelling platforms to remove millions of under-16 accounts does not just advance child protection; it also redirects children's attention and advertiser spending back toward traditional media. Online news outlet Crikey noted drily that the ban is "as much a News Corp policy as it is a government policy."<br>This does not mean parental anxiety is manufactured. Platform design harms are real. If anything good can come out of these discussions, it would be that platforms feel compelled to address the features that are creating some of the legitimate issues raised by parents and experts, leading to more control for parents, minors and possibly all users over their online experience. The problem is not the concern; it is what gets built from it.<br>When Australia's leading mental health organizations jointly opposed the ban, arguing it would cut children off from support networks, they were no match for a coordinated campaign across every major masthead. When over 140 scholars signed an open letter calling for a nuanced approach, it went largely unreported. Professor Amanda Third, in her chapter in Springer's The Public Child (2025), calls this "regulatory theatre": the figure of the threatened child deployed to generate political momentum while actual evidence is sidelined. She identifies three "disappearances" in the Australian debate: the private child, children's own voices, and a decade of considered online safety reform already underway.<br>The result was legislation passed in six days, without a clear definition of social media, that left the eSafety Commissioner twelve months to work out enforcement. Reports quickly surfaced of teenagers circumventing the restrictions using borrowed accounts or AI-generated images. ReachOut's Kids Helpline received nearly 100 contacts in three weeks from teenagers reporting distress at losing their support networks. 95.7% of LGBTQIA+ young people surveyed by Minus18 relied on social media to access friends and emotional support. And as Crikey reported in February 2026, the official position of Australia's own regulator is that it does not yet know if the ban is helping. That inconvenient fact has not reached the governments now using Australia as their template.<br>Europe: same conditions, different postcodes<br>In the United Kingdom, News UK, Murdoch's British operation, holds the same commercial position as News Corp Australia: a once-dominant publisher hollowed out by the platforms now being targeted. The Sun's reporting that Starmer was "leaning towards" a ban performed the same...