New Zealand’s plan to keep children under 16 off social media has reached an awkward political junction. The Government wants a ban on the books before the 7 November election, but its own coalition partner will not vote for it, which leaves National reaching across the aisle to Labour to find the numbers.
The idea has been building for more than a year. National MP Catherine Wedd first put an under-16 age limit into a member’s bill in 2025, modelled on the Australian law that bars younger teenagers from platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and X. Her Social Media (Age-Restricted Users) Bill went to Parliament’s Education and Workforce Committee, which heard from hundreds of submitters and, in December 2025, recommended pressing ahead with the age restriction. The committee received more than 400 submissions and made a dozen recommendations backing the plan.
Then the process stalled. In May 2026 the member’s bill was put on hold while Education Minister Erica Stanford worked up a broader law change, and the Government signalled it would bring its own legislation rather than lean on a backbencher’s bill. That drafting is now under way. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has said the new law is being written by the Parliamentary Counsel Office and will be introduced before voters go to the polls, and the Government has already advertised for a director to run the scheme before the bill has even reached the House.
Luxon has left no doubt about where he stands. He told RNZ he was “deeply supportive” of keeping under-16s off social media, framing it as a child safety measure aimed at protecting young people from harmful content, bullying and design features built to keep them scrolling.
The hitch is arithmetic. ACT, National’s coalition partner, opposes the ban, arguing it would be easy to get around, hard to enforce and would drag most adult users into age verification to prove they are old enough. Because ACT will not support it inside the coalition, National cannot pass the measure as a straightforward Government bill, so it needs another partner in the House. Labour is the obvious one. The Opposition has agreed that the rules around children and social media need an overhaul and has indicated it is willing to work with National, while stressing it wants a proper consensus rather than a rushed election-year law. If that cooperation holds, it would be an unusual sight in the final weeks before a campaign, the two big parties lining up together against one of National’s own support partners.
The detail is where it gets thornier. To keep under-16s off the big platforms, companies such as Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit, X, YouTube and Twitch would have to verify the ages of their users, and that is what worries privacy advocates. Privacy Commissioner Michael Webster has warned that checking ages through digital identity documents could create fresh privacy risks for everyone who uses a platform, not just teenagers. Children’s Commissioner Claire Achmad has called for young people themselves to be consulted, cautioning that a blanket ban could carry negative consequences for some groups and that many young people would rather see the platforms held to account than simply be locked out.
A separate row flared this month over virtual private networks, the tools that let a user route their connection through another country and sidestep local blocks. After media reports suggested the Government was weighing VPN restrictions to stop teenagers slipping past the ban, Luxon shut the idea down. “I can reject that outright. There’s no plan to ban VPNs at all,” he told 1News, and Stanford’s office confirmed the Government was not looking at restricting or banning them. National MP Joseph Mooney went further, saying New Zealand should never consider joining the small list of authoritarian states that ban VPNs.
Looming over all of it is the Australian experience. Australia brought in the world’s first national under-16 social media ban, and early reporting suggests it has struggled to bite, with questions over how effectively platforms can verify ages and how many young users simply find another way in. The Greens have seized on that, arguing a ban punishes children rather than the companies whose designs cause the harm, and that an unenforceable rule risks giving parents false comfort.
What happens next depends on timing and goodwill. The Government has to introduce a bill, get it through a first reading and a select committee, and pass it before Parliament rises for the election, all while relying on the party it will spend the campaign trying to beat. If it slips, the whole question rolls into the next term and becomes a promise for whoever forms the next government. Voters weighing where the parties stand on this and other issues can compare their own views against the parties using Newswire’s voting tool.
Should New Zealand ban under-16s from social media, and can any such rule actually be enforced? Share your view in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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