"Shar, a 15-year-old aspiring singer, opened an account on Lemon8 and had urged others to follow. She’d been worried that all 4,000 of her TikTok followers would disappear overnight. That didn’t happen.
“None of my accounts on any platform has been shut down, not even the ones that I put my real age,” said Shar, who was relieved to find that her TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat accounts are still working.
“I genuinely do not know a person who has had it shut down, my age,” she said. “I’m pretty surprised, to be honest, because they made such a big deal about it. I think if you make such a big deal about something, you need to go through with it.”
However, for cheerleader Lucy and her friends, uncertainty about how long they’ll still be on social media is causing anxiety. She said her friends haven’t been able to download their accounts because they don’t have enough storage. They don’t want to delete them and lose their memories, yet they’re scared their private photos and messages might be frozen in a vast digital vault somewhere, potentially for years.
Lucy wants to keep Instagram because, as a cheerleader, her image is sometimes posted to cheerleading accounts, and she likes to know where and how it’s being used. She also follows other cheerleading groups to check out their routines as she tries to improve.
Lucy – like many other children – believes there’s a need to address problematic content on social media, but she doesn’t think a ban is the best response.
“I actually want it to work, because I think children shouldn’t be on social media that much,” said Lucy. “But I don’t think it will work,” she quickly added.
She said a more effective response would be to impose time limits – “anywhere from one hour to two hours I reckon is fair.”
~ Hilary Whiteman
"Australian teens were kicked off social media this week"
https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/12/australia/australia-social-media-kids-intl-hnk-dst
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