Australia’s new teen social media restrictions come into effect today, which will see all Australian teens aged under 16 lose access to the major social media apps.

And while the platforms collectively have voiced their strong opposition to the Australian government’s direction on this, they have all moved to comply with the law, including Reddit, which initially pushed to have itself excluded from the ban, by arguing that it should not be considered a social media app.

Which didn’t succeed, and as a result, Reddit’s now announced a range of new measures, including some that will impact all teen users, as a result of the Australian law.

Over on r/RedditSafety, the Reddit team has outlined four key changes as a result of the Australian rules.

For Australian teens specifically, Reddit is enacting the following:

• In Australia, Redditors who are 16 and over can have accounts (Reddit will continue to be accessible to browse without an account).
• New Australian users will be asked to provide their birthdate during account signup, and will see their age listed in their settings.
• All Australian account holders will be subject to an age prediction model
• Australian account holders determined to be over 13 but under 16 will have their accounts suspended

So Reddit will be using an age prediction model to determine user ages, in the hopes that this will ensure that underage users can’t log into the app, though kids will still be able to view a non-logged-in version of the platform.

Meanwhile, Reddit’s also announced that teen account holders in all regions will now be subject to more stringent safety features, including stricter chat settings, no ads personalization or sensitive ads, and no access to NSFW or mature content.

So Reddit’s implementing broader changes as a result of the Australian regulatory push, which will mean improved safety measures for all young users.

Will that be of benefit?

This is the bigger question around the teen social media ban in general, with teen users in Australia confident that they’ll be able to beat any age-checking measures.

Or they’ll just switch to other, less safe, less monitored platforms that aren’t included in the Australian ban.

The concern here is that the larger platforms, which have access to significantly more resources, are far better equipped to keep kids safe, and by cutting off access, young teens will be lured to even more risky corners of the web.

Already, Australian teens have been migrating to alternatives, and it does seem inevitable that this will be the outcome, that smaller platforms will get a boost, and VPN usage will soar.

So, rather than prompting kids to get outside to play more sports, in an idealistic interpretation of the ban, what might really happen is that kids will end up exposed to more harmful behaviors, negating the whole process.

Most of the major platforms have argued this, and have called for expanded digital literacy education instead. But the Australian government is pushing ahead, and we’ll now wait and see what happens as a result (note: initial feedback suggests that many teens have been able to evade the new tests, while Lemon8, Yope and Rednote are emerging as alternative options).

For its part, Reddit says that it disagrees with “the scope, effectiveness, and privacy implications of this law.”

But it’s aligning with the regulations anyway, with these new updates.