Australia's under-16 social media ban has reached the High Court, where Reddit and a digital rights group argued on Tuesday that the law is unconstitutional and that the rush to pass it produced "ill thought out" legislation.

The ban, introduced last December, is the most restrictive of its kind in the world and covers platforms including Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Kick, X, Twitch and Threads. Supporters say it protects children from harmful content; critics argue it is a blunt instrument that removes young people from public conversation rather than making platforms safer.

Reddit's counsel, Perry Herzfeld SC, told the court that the law impinges the implied freedom of political communication for under-16s, a constitutional protection that Australian courts have read into the country's founding document.

How the law was passed

Part of the argument is about process. Reddit's lawyers said the government announced the ban in 2024 and passed it within a week, with only 24 hours allowed for submissions. They noted that a 2021 parliamentary inquiry into social media had not recommended a ban, and that the eSafety commissioner had warned at the time that a ban would be a "blunt force approach".

The constitutional challenge itself was filed by the Digital Freedom Project, a group led by New South Wales parliamentarian John Ruddick, a few weeks before the ban took effect on 10 December last year. Ruddick told reporters outside the court that the policy amounted to "censorship".

Two teenagers who originally spearheaded the case, Noah Jones and Macy Neyland, have since withdrawn as plaintiffs. They have not publicly explained why, although Jones attended Tuesday's hearing.

What the government says

The communications minister, Anika Wells, defended the law outside the court, framing the case as a question about what society is willing to accept from technology companies. "We are here to defend a fundamental tenet of Australian democracy, which is an Australian's right, and particularly an Australian child's right, to be free from harm," she said, describing the challenge as a "sustained ideological attack".

The government's position is that the ban is a protective measure, not a restriction on speech, and that age verification is a technical problem rather than a constitutional one. The platforms covered by the ban have had to build systems to estimate age, and the early evidence from those systems has been mixed.

Why the case matters beyond Australia

Australia has become a test case for a policy that several other governments are watching. If the High Court strikes the ban down, the argument that age-based restrictions are legally fragile will travel; if it upholds the law, other countries will have a template.

The judgment will also shape how platforms design for minors. Under-16 bans require age assurance, and age assurance requires collecting data about everyone, which raises its own privacy questions.

The comparison with other online-safety fights is instructive. Schools in the UK spent part of October dealing with a wave of hoax threat emails, an example of how quickly online harms become offline emergencies, while restrictions on satellite internet access in Ukraine have shown how platform rules can become geopolitical instruments.

What happens next

The hearing is expected to run for several days, with the court reserving its decision. Whatever the outcome, the case will not settle the underlying argument about whether bans or safety-by-design is the better route, which is now being debated in legislatures from London to Washington.

For Australian families, the practical question is what happens to the ban while the case proceeds. The law remains in force unless the court orders otherwise, and the platforms are continuing to enforce it.

The government has said it will defend the policy all the way. Reddit has said it wants the law struck down, not because it opposes child safety, but because it says the measure was written too broadly and too quickly to survive scrutiny.

Underneath the constitutional argument sits a practical one that the court will not settle: how any age limit is enforced. Australia's law relies on platforms estimating age, using signals such as account behaviour, payment data and facial estimation. Each method produces errors in both directions, blocking some adults and admitting some children, and each requires collecting more data about everyone who signs up. That is why the case is being watched by governments that want the protection without the legal risk, and by platforms that would rather be regulated on what they do with data than on who is allowed to log in. A ruling either way will also set the terms for the next round of legislation, because every government now drafting an age limit will be asked whether it can survive the same challenge.

The case sits alongside other fights over how platforms shape public life, from the social media reckoning debated in Aaron Sorkin's new film to the wave of hoax threat emails sent to UK schools and the Starlink restrictions imposed on Ukraine.