The Heads Up Alliance

15/06/2026

BREAKING NEWS: the UK has just announced plans to legislate a minimum social media age of 16 years! This is precisely the global contagion we’ve been hoping for. Tech companies have been trying to kill this crazy idea and stop it at Australia. But after today's announcement, this train is unstoppable. As more and more countries follow Australia’s lead, we will work together across borders to sharpen enforcement and reset cultural norms all over the world. Which country is next?

14/06/2026

There’s a High Court case running at the moment, seeking to strike down Australia’s social media minimum-age law.

The basis for the challenge?

Apparently the TikTok generation needs to remain hooked on social media for political awareness.

12/06/2026

11/06/2026

On 10 December 2025, Australia became the first country in the world to enact social media minimum-age laws.

But that historic day did not come easily.

It was preceded by months of heated national debate about children’s safety, parental rights, platform responsibility and free speech.

The Heads Up Alliance was one of the most vocal advocates for the law; the Free Speech Union of Australia was equally prominent in opposing it.

On a cold and wet night a couple of weeks ago in Melbourne - some five months after the law took effect, and amid two live High Court challenges to it - the two sides came face to face to debate one of the most enduring objections to the law: that it unfairly restricts the free speech rights of Australia’s youth.

Heads Up Alliance founder Dany Elachi and Free Speech Union President Dr Reuben Kirkham unpack the arguments for and against. Although they find some surprising common ground, on the central question, there can only be one winner.

Listen to the full debate and decide for yourself.

p.s. We hope this recording assists and encourages our sister movements around the world as they too encounter similar objections in their own countries.

09/06/2026

On 10 December 2025 - six months ago to the day - the Heads Up Alliance stood on the sunny lawns of Kirribilli House, alongside survivor parents and other advocates, to hear the Australian Prime Minister deliver an important speech.

He began his speech by declaring he’d never been prouder to lead the nation. He spoke about Australian families finally reclaiming guardianship of their children from Big Tech’s hold over them. About a nation prioritising its youth over vested interests and finally saying “enough is enough”.

It was a soaring, hopeful speech, worthy of our enthusiastic applause.

In a scene that might only happen in this great country, he then donned an apron, fired up the BBQ and cooked some snags for his appreciative guests.

Unbeknownst to us, in that same moment that Australia took a stand for the future of its children, as the Prime Minister was turning the sausages to ensure an even char, Big Tech was putting the final touches on its designs for a simple but devastating counter-play.

The plan? To ignore the will of the Australian people as expressed through its Parliament; to pretend to try very hard to comply while actually not complying at all; to give the impression that the law is unworkable; and to ensure that the setback they suffered in Australia would not be replicated anywhere else in the world.

And so it is coming to pass.

No sooner had the First Apron been laundered, social media companies reported to eSafety that they had deleted 4.7 million accounts for under 16’s (since revised to upwards of 5 million).

The eSafety Commissioner declared it a “significant outcome.” And the Prime Minister, perhaps not quite versed in the cunning of social media companies, also seemed impressed: "It’s encouraging that social media companies are making meaningful efforts to comply with laws and keep kids off their platforms”.

Except, they weren’t.

Ask any Australian parent.

And the 4.7 million number was a flat-out lie.

It was soon revealed that this figure included inactive accounts, duplicate accounts and accounts that had already been deleted but continued to exist in the backend of the platforms.

By late March it appeared that the government was cottoning on to Big Tech’s dirty tricks with the Communications Minister Anika Wells declaring: “The kind of tactics we’re seeing deployed by social media platforms to undermine Australia’s world-leading law are right out of the big tech playbook”.

But then yesterday, it seemed we took a step, well, backwards - a step in the wrong direction.

We’re not quite sure what to make of the PM’s media statement in which he repeats the discredited numbers of “more than 5 million under-16s accounts removed, deactivated or restricted.“

Parents have already had it up to here with the spin of tech companies. The last thing we need is our PM propagating them too.

Six months after the Prime Minister’s lofty speech, and eighteen whole months after the legislation first passed into law (ostensibly to give tech companies 12 months to prepare - not plot), we can’t afford any more missteps or grace.

We now look to the Prime Minister for leadership with a clear-eyed understanding of how tech companies have played us, and an unwavering determination to hold them to account.

Even if it means booting them out of Australia altogether for their brazen disregard of our nation’s laws and the will of the Australian people, so be it. Our children deserve it.

08/06/2026

In Toy Story 5, the villain isn’t a destructive kid who tortures toys for fun.

It isn’t a power-hungry teddy bear.

Nor is it a creepy, ventriloquist dummy.

This time, the villain is an iPad.

In a recent interview to promote the new movie, Tom Hanks - the voice of Woody - described a scene where the characters look out across the city and see the blue glow of screens in children’s bedrooms. A sight, he says, that “strikes terror into the heart.”

Parents everywhere know the feeling.

It’s powerful to see a children’s movie naming what so many families are living through.

But we won’t turn this ship around by simply identifying the problem.

We need to act in our own homes.

Do you have rules around the use of screens in your children’s bedrooms?

04/06/2026

“Is it true that Australia's social media minimum-age law is failing? Our media is full of those stories, and opponents are using it to stall our own efforts”.

We have been asked this question repeatedly by affiliate parent advocacy groups around the world.

The question carries particular urgency in the UK, where a national consultation has just concluded and the government is expected to decide very shortly whether to follow Australia's lead.

Here is what our sister movements in the UK - and across the world - need to know.

03/06/2026

Most of us believed the hype back in 2008, when Prime Minister Kevin Rudd breathlessly put a laptop in the hands of every upper high school student in Australia and promised a “Digital Education Revolution”.

But it was a big flop.

Not only did the revolution fizzle out, in the years since we have watched with growing alarm as educational standards continued to slide.

It’s a powerful case study in the importance of insisting on evidence before policy - no matter how shiny or exciting a new technology may seem.

Almost 20 years later, the smart schools are looking for ways to undo the damage of the screen-based classroom.

Introducing Our Lady of Mercy Catholic College in Burraneer, and their forward-thinking principal, Christine Harding…

01/06/2026

This preprint academic paper blows the lid on Big Tech's hidden influence on social media research, suggesting that “industry influence in social media research is extensive, impactful, and often opaque”.

It is repugnant when industry attempts to purchase science at the best of times.

But when children’s wellbeing and children’s lives are at stake, it is downright criminal.

Why do we let Big Tech get away with this?

31/05/2026

Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert certainly set the cat among the pigeons with her op-ed on Wednesday, arguing that:

“In the three years since ChatGPT was released we have arrived at a point in which all of Australia’s universities are committing widespread, industrial-scale fraud.”

Subsequent letters to the editor evidenced a range of responses, from strong support -

“Kylie Moore-Gilbert is spot on” (Adrian Lipscomb, Urunga)

- to outright derision -

“Catastrophising generalisations about the sector, and the capabilities of current students, aren’t a serious contribution to a serious topic” (Professor Andrew Lynch, dean of law, UNSW).

What’s your opinion?

Has AI destroyed the value of a university degree?