Indonesia just banned children from social media. I went to Bali and tested it.
I have spent a lot of time writing about social media bans from a distance — reading the announcements, tracking the legislation, reporting on what regulators say will happen. So when our family holiday to Bali coincided with the latest ban around the world of social media to under 16s, it was the perfect opportunity to test it out.
My son tested the ban with Roblox and opened the app. It showed a server connection error. My other son then tried Pokémon Go; that stuck on the loading screen and went no further. I hadn’t said anything to them about the ban so they Googled it (or course) and quickly found that their accounts had been blocked because they were registered as under 16. The ban was real and it was working.
And then they did as all kids would do – they downloaded a VPN. Both apps worked immediately.
That sequence probably took about ten minutes. And it told me more about the promise and the limits of social media bans than anything I have read about them.
What the ban covers
Indonesia’s government has designated eight platforms as high risk — YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Bigo Live and Roblox — and banned under-16s from holding accounts on any of them. Platforms are required to deactivate existing accounts belonging to under-16s and prevent new ones being created.
Pokémon Go is not on the official high-risk list, but appears to be applying restrictions proactively — suggesting some platforms are going further than the minimum required, either out of caution or in anticipation of wider enforcement.
Under-13s face stricter rules still, limited to platforms specifically designed for children. Children aged 13 to 15 can access platforms classified as lower risk, though what qualifies as lower risk has not been fully defined publicly. Indonesia’s Communications Minister described the move as a response to a “digital emergency” — a 2023 UNICEF survey found that roughly half of Indonesian children surveyed had been exposed to sexual images on social media. With around 70 million children in the country, this is the largest rollout of a social media age restriction outside the Western world.
The ban is real — and so is the workaround
What the Bali experience shows is that the restriction operates at account level rather than as a simple geographic block — but that a determined child can get around it in minutes. The boys searched the problem, identified the cause, found a solution and were back online before most adults would have finished reading the error message. Reports from Indonesia confirm this is not unusual: VPN downloads among young people spiked within days of the ban taking effect.
Younger children are far less likely to know how to do this, and for that group the ban is genuinely changing what they can access. The friction is real, even if it is not absolute. But it does illustrate the central challenge every country pursuing a social media ban faces: the children most capable of circumventing restrictions are often the ones old enough to be the target of them.
What other countries are learning from this
Indonesia’s ban is being watched closely across Southeast Asia and beyond. Malaysia’s under-16 ban took effect in January 2026. Singapore is taking a different approach, requiring platforms to restrict under-18s from downloading age-inappropriate apps rather than banning access outright. Thailand is drafting rules to bar under-14s from personal accounts.
Each country is running its own version of the same experiment, and the results will matter for every government still deciding what to do. The honest question Indonesia raises is not whether bans work in principle, but whether the friction they create is meaningful enough to change behaviour at scale — and for which children.
What this means for your family
If your child has a VPN on their phone, it is worth understanding why. Ask them what they use it for — the answer will tell you more than the app itself.
If you are travelling to countries with active social media bans — Indonesia, Australia, Malaysia — expect popular apps not to work on existing under-16 accounts, including some not on the official restricted list.
I don’t believe for one minute that banning social media and gaming is futile. But watching my sons work around the restrictions in ten minutes made me think the more important outcome isn’t the block itself — it’s the conversation it forces. Why is this app banned? What makes it riskier than that one? Who decided, and on what basis? Because a child who understands why certain platforms are considered more harmful is in a much better position than one who has simply been locked out and found the key.
Sources: AP News — Indonesia starts restricting social media access to children under 16, 28 March 2026 Bloomberg — Indonesia starts first Southeast Asia social media ban for kids, 28 March 2026 The Diplomat — Indonesia announces social media ban for children under 16, March 2026
