If you are in Australia, you are probably aware of the social media delay that is rolling out in early December 2025 for children below 16. It’s something that all schools and school libraries should be aware of and now’s the time to take some steps to ensure you are ready.
The eSafety website is a great resource for finding guidance and sharing with students and caregivers. https://www.esafety.gov.au/about-us/industry-regulation/social-media-age-restrictions-hub
As a teacher librarian and head of library, there are a few things I’ve done to make sure the library is prepared, as well as supporting others in the school through the changes.
Instagram account
Something I’ve dropped this year was posting to our school library’s instagram account, I just didn’t have the time. Turns out, that might have been a great decision. Schools are encouraged to look for other means of communicating to students and communities, so my school library Instagram account is going to remain inactive. I’ve shared a final post, ensuring it was before December 4th, encouraging followers to connect with us on our website. While technically I could still use it to share posts and connect with parents, our main followers were students and other school libraries, so I’ve made the decision to pause posting completely and focus on using our school website and asking the marketing department to share to their social accounts. If you have a school library social media account, make sure your account follows any updated school policies.
I’ve ensured I have removed links to this account from our library homepage and library website, so that I am not encouraging students younger than 16 to access Instagram.
YouTube
YouTube is an interesting one. I’ve used YouTube to host and share how-to videos for the school library, plus of course it is a go-to source for videos to share with students and staff and embed into research guides. Fortunately, the eSafety website makes it clear that
“Under-16s will still be able to see publicly available social media content that doesn’t require logging into an account.” (eSafety Commissioner, 2025).
And “YouTube videos that can be seen without logging into an account can still be shared by teachers.” (eSafety Commissioner, 2025).
As for embedding into our LibPaths, this wording helps
“Some of these services allow teachers to embed public video content from other platforms onto the learning management system, such as YouTube videos. If the content is publicly available and does not require the student to log into another platform, students will still be able to watch this content.” (eSafety Commissioner, 2025).
This means I haven’t had to remove any videos from YouTube or any of the embedded videos in my LibPaths as they are all publicly available and don’t require students to login to a YouTube account to view them.
Promoting other platforms
This delay has been a great way to promote some of the other platforms the library provides for the school, like Clickview. Clickview is a video streaming platform for education and has features like video sharing and video upload. This has solved one of our issues the delay causes, with the uploading and sharing of student-created video content for assignment pieces. We used to use YouTube and this obviously won’t be allowed any longer. As well as sharing tips on how to use this platform to curriculum leaders, I’ll be running a few drop-in sessions for staff on how to use this tool and I’ve created some how-to guides.
Sharing content from other platforms
When teaching students about digital safety, health literacy or AI literacy, I have in the past shared TikTok videos or Instagram reels to help make my point. For now, I’ll be pausing this practice until my school can provide some guidance around if they support it and update their policies. This is the wording from the eSafety website:
“For further guidance, including if educators will be able to use their own accounts to share age-appropriate education materials, please refer to school or sector policies and procedures.” (eSafety Commissioner, 2025).
New ways to connect
I’m glad my professional social media accounts are separate from my school accounts, so I can be clear in saying what I am sharing is for other school library professionals and not targeting students under 16 at all. I’m also looking to consolidate how else I share and promote what’s happening in the school library via our website and blog posts, digital signage, school newsletter and using school social media accounts where needed.
So that’s how I’ve prepared for the social media delay. What are you doing in your school library?
References
eSafety Commissioner. (2025). What do the social media restrictions mean for educators? https://www.esafety.gov.au/educators/social-media-age-restrictions