Should US follow Australia and ban young kids from social media?

LOS ANGELES -- Imagine telling your teenage child that he or she couldn't use social media anymore. As terrifying as that sounds, Australia is doing it and many say the U.S. should do the same.

Starting Wednesday, Australia is banning access to platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube for kids under 16.

Australia's social media ban for children 16 and under is now in effect. Here's everything you need to know.

Not surprisingly, Australian kids are not happy.

"We will be completely silenced and cut off from our country and the rest of the world with this ban," said 15-year-old Noah Jones, an Australian social media advocate.

But there are plenty of people here in the U.S. who think American kids should be kept away from social media as well.

"Australia is really taking the lead and the question is: What's the U.S. going to do?" asked Sarah Gardner, the CEO of the child safety advocacy group Heat Initiative.

Gardner and an handful of others staged a protest outside the Apple store at The Grove in the Fairfax District, demanding that Apple add safeguards to its products to protect children.

She says keeping young kids off social media is also something many parents would support.

"Its not just the addiction, which is enough harm in and of itself, it's exposure to eating disorder content, suicide content, to child sexual abuse material," said Gardner. "These are real dangers that kids experience on these platforms."

That's the argument in Australia: social media use leads to a spike in serious problems for children.

Four years ago, internal documents from Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, leaked, showing that those social media platforms contributed to suicidal thoughts and body image problems in teenagers.

Meta has since implemented safety features to address some of those issues, but parents ABC7 spoke with still think more countries - including the U.S. - need to protect kids the way Australia is.

"This will, on a day-to-day basis, protect a lot of kids from exploitation, and predators and inappropriate content that is being pushed at them every day by these companies," said Nicki Petrossi, the host of the "Scrolling to Death" podcast.

The implementation of the ban, a global first, is being closely watched as other countries and local governments look to adopt similar measures.