On Teens and the Fediverse Opportunity

In Australia, and England, and Ireland, and Switzerland there are talks, in some cases that are being implemented that seak to block children and teens from using the Social Media Giants.

"As of December 2025, the Australian social media ban specifically targets major commercial platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, X, YouTube, Kick, and Reddit. The ban requires these platforms to prevent Australians under 16 from creating or maintaining accounts." Source: Le Chat by Mistral

The ban does not include Mastodon, Lemmy, Pixelfed, Foto, WordPress and other social apps. This means that teenagers who are tech savvy can slide towards self-hosted communities. Either they can self-host for their group of friends, or they can have a school wide, or university wide instance, to connect with peers, teachers and local businesses.

For several months now I have said that I believe social media bans should look towards those that own and control social media platforms, because what is toxic to children and teenagers is toxic to adults too, as demonstrated by articles in the Guardian and other publications as well as books such as Mindf*ck.

Before the pandemic social media was popular, especially in places like London, but less so in Switzerland, France and other countries. I limit it to these examples as I have closer ties to these countries. When I was interviewed by Nouvo, years ago, I said that I didn't expect Twitter to thrive because the community was too sparse.

Fast forward to 2024-2025 and I see that GoSocial, Meetup and Strava are vibrant communities. GoSocial is built upon WhatsApp group chats, Meetup is an events site, and Strava is a cycling and running community, for the most part. I see people also track their dog walks, although I haven't seen people plan "group social dog walks" yet, but that may come, as the niche widens.

Children and teens are being banned from Social Media but Social Media is already dead. I haven't established a close friendship with anyone on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky or Threads in years. The community that made these communities so sticky in the past is gone. Now it's "refresh, scroll, refresh scroll, oh duck, I just spent two hours without achieving anything".

Technology has Advanced

When I was a teen, in the 90s, and the web was new, it was sparsely populated. We talked with people around the world but it was relatively rare to meet people from the web in person, in large part because they lived a TGV or flight away. Now online people are ubiquitous. Tomorrow I could ride with the Nyon cycling community, and tonight I could go on a pub crawl with the Nyon GoSocial community.

I can also go to Azure community events, Ruby Events, broader tech events, historical walks and more.

The Tech Giant Monopoly is Gone

Before 2006 we were part of social networks with 30-40 active users per web forum. With MySpace, Twitter, Jaiku, Google+ and other sites we went from small disparate online communities to global communities. With time, as more people adopted the World Wide Web and online communities, so the switch back to smaller communities switched directions.

We had to be on Twitter and Facebook. That's where the broadest community was. In 2024-2025 this is no longer the case. Strava, WhatsApp, Signal and other apps allow us to have small niche communities that are local, and about our own passions.

And Finally

The Atlantic asks Is This the End of Kids on Social Media and I'm tempted to say, "nope, this is the end of social media as a concept, and we're going to revert to local social networks." When Facebook introdued zynga games it discouraged conversations. When Twitter sold itself to Musk for 40 billion it encouraged people, in their millions to flee. When Instagram sold itself to Facebook, it ensured that it would become obsolete.

I see Bluesky making the same mistakes as Twitter. This morning I saw someone comment on how many bots were following them. My other reason for distrusting Bluesky is that it's a site with venture capital funding that ignores the parallels between itself and the Fediverse.

And finally, in my eyes, the real ban should be applied to those that control social media, rather than those that use social media. Until a decade ago we had social networks, and social networks were healthy. It's only since 2020 or so that social media has become unhealthy. Decisions taken by those high up in social media companies ruined the experience for everyone. What is toxic for children, is toxic for adults.

This is why I want to revert to Social Networks on a human scale.