Children under 16 can no longer access 10 of the world’s biggest platforms, including Facebook, TikTok and Instagram.

Australia has banned children under 16 from social media in a world-first, as other countries consider similar age-based measures amid rising concerns over its effects on children’s health and safety.

Under the new law, which came into effect at midnight local time on Wednesday (13:00 GMT on Tuesday), 10 of the biggest platforms face $33m in fines if they fail to purge Australia-based users younger than 16.

The law has been criticised by major technology companies and free speech campaigners, but praised by parents and child advocates.

The Australian government says unprecedented measures are needed to protect children from “predatory algorithms” filling phone screens with bullying, sex and violence.

“Too often, social media isn’t social at all,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in advance of the ban.

“Instead, it’s used as a weapon for bullies, a platform for peer pressure, a driver of anxiety, a vehicle for scammers and, worst of all, a tool for online predators.”

The law states that Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat and Reddit are forbidden from creating or keeping accounts belonging to users in Australia under 16.

Streaming platforms Kick and Twitch are also on the government’s blacklist, as are message boards Threads and X. Popular apps and websites such as Roblox, Pinterest and WhatsApp are currently exempt – but the government has stressed that the list remains under review.

Meta, YouTube and other social media giants have already condemned the ban.

YouTube, in particular, has attacked the law, describing it as “rushed” and saying it would only push children into deeper, darker corners of the internet.

While most platforms have begrudgingly agreed to comply, for now, legal challenges are in the wind.

Online discussion site Reddit said Tuesday it could not confirm local media reports that said it would seek to overturn the ban in Australia’s High Court.

The Sydney-based internet rights group Digital Freedom Project has already launched its own bid to have teenagers reinstated to social media.

Some parents, tired of seeing children stuck to their phones, see the ban as a relief.

Father-of-five Dany Elachi said the restrictions were a long-overdue “line in the sand”.

“We need to err on the side of caution before putting anything addictive in the hands of children,” he told the AFP news agency.

The Australian government concedes the ban will be far from perfect at the outset, and canny teenagers will find ways to circumvent it.

Social media companies bear the sole responsibility for checking users are 16 or older.

Some platforms say they will use AI tools to estimate ages based on photos, while young users may also choose to prove their age by uploading a government ID.

There is keen interest in whether Australia’s sweeping restrictions can work as regulators around the globe wrestle with the potential dangers of social media.

Malaysia indicated it was planning to introduce a similar ban next year.

Australia’s Communications Minister Anika Wells said last week that the European Commission, France, Denmark, Greece, Romania and New Zealand were also interested in setting a minimum age for social media.

Australia is banning social media for everyone under the age of 16 from December 10. The government says their intention is to help protect children and teenagers from risks online, such as cyberbullying and harmful content.

The BBC took to the streets of Sydney to find out what young people aged between 18 to 20 think of the ban.

Video by Kellie Highet

Ron Curtis, an English professor in Montreal, lived for 40 years with a degenerative spinal disease, in what he called the “black hole” of chronic pain.

On a July day in 2022, Mr. Curtis, 64, ate a last bowl of vegetable soup made by his wife, Lori, and, with the help of a palliative care doctor, died in his bedroom overlooking a lake.

Aron Wade, a successful 54-year-old stage and television actor in Belgium, decided he could no longer tolerate life with the depression that haunted him for three decades.

Last year, after a panel of medical experts found he had “unbearable mental suffering,” a doctor came to his home and gave him medicine to stop his heart, with his partner and two best friends at his side.

Argemiro Ariza was in his early 80s when he began to lose function in his limbs, no longer able to care for his wife, who had dementia, in their home in Bogotá.

Doctors diagnosed A.L.S., and he told his daughter Olga that he wanted to die while he still had dignity. His children threw him a party with a mariachi band and lifted him from his wheelchair to dance. A few days later, he admitted himself to a hospital, and a doctor administered a drug that ended his life.

Until recently, each of these deaths would have been considered a murder. But a monumental change is underway around the world. From liberal European countries to conservative Latin American ones, a new way of thinking about death is starting to take hold.

Stephanie Nolen is exploring access, attitudes and approaches to medically assisted death around the world.

Dec. 9, 2025

Over the past five years, the practice of allowing a physician to help severely ill patients end their lives with medication has been legalized in nine countries on three continents. Courts or legislatures, or both, are considering legalization in a half-dozen more, including South Korea and South Africa, as well as eight of the 31 American states where it remains prohibited.

It is a last frontier in the expansion of individual autonomy. More people are seeking to define the terms of their deaths in the same way they have other aspects of their lives, such as marriage and childbearing. This is true even in Latin America, where conservative institutions such as the Roman Catholic church are still powerful.

“We believe in the priority of our control over our bodies, and as a heterogeneous culture, we believe in choices: If your choice does not affect me, go ahead,” said Dr. Julieta Moreno Molina, a bioethicist who has advised Colombia’s Ministry of Health on its assisted dying regulations.

Yet, as assisted death gains more acceptance, there are major unresolved questions about who should be eligible. While most countries begin with assisted death for terminal illness, which has the most public support, this is often followed quickly by a push for wider access. With that push comes often bitter public debate.

Should someone with intractable depression be allowed an assisted death?

European countries and Colombia all permit people with irremediable suffering from conditions such as depression or schizophrenia to seek an assisted death. But in Canada, the issue has become contentious. Assisted death for people who do not have a reasonably foreseeable natural death was legalized in 2021, but the government has repeatedly excluded people with mental illness. Two of them are challenging the exclusion in court on the grounds that it violates their constitutional rights.

In public debate, supporters of the right to assisted death for these patients say that people who have lived with severe depression for years, and have tried a variety of therapies and medications, should be allowed to decide when they are no longer willing to keep pursuing treatments. Opponents, concerned that mental illness can involve a pathological wish to die, say it can be difficult to predict the potential effectiveness of treatments. And, they argue, people who struggle to get help from an overburdened public health service may simply give up and choose to die, though their conditions might have been improved.

Should a child with an incurable condition be able to choose assisted death?

The ability to consent is a core consideration in requesting assisted death. Only a handful of countries are willing to extend that right to minors. Even in the places that do, there are just a few assisted deaths for children each year, almost always children with cancer.

In Colombia and the Netherlands, children over 12 can request assisted death on their own. Parents can provide consent for children 11 and younger.

Denise de Ruijter took comfort in her Barbie dolls when she struggled to connect with people. She was diagnosed with autism and had episodes of depression and psychosis. As a teenager in a Dutch town, she craved the life her schoolmates had — nights out, boyfriends — but couldn’t manage it.

She attempted suicide several times before applying for an assisted death at 18. Evaluators required her to try three years of additional therapies before agreeing her suffering was unbearable. She died in 2021, with her family and Barbies nearby.

The issue is under renewed scrutiny in the Netherlands, where, over the past decade, a growing number of adolescents have applied for assisted death for relief from irremediable psychiatric suffering from conditions such as eating disorders and anxiety.

Most such applications by teens are either withdrawn by the patient, or rejected by assessors, but public concern over a few high-profile cases of teens who received assisted deaths prompted the country’s regulator to consider a moratorium on approvals for children applying on the basis of psychiatric suffering.

Should someone with dementia be allowed assisted death?

Many people dread the idea of losing their cognitive abilities and their autonomy, and hope to have an assisted death when they reach that point. But this is a more complex situation to regulate than for a person who can still make a clear request.

How can a person who is losing their mental capacity consent to dying? Most governments, and doctors, are too uncomfortable to permit it, even though the idea tends to be popular in countries with aging populations.

In Colombia, Spain, Ecuador and the Canadian province of Quebec, people who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease or other kinds of cognitive decline can request assessment for an assisted death before they lose mental capacity, sign an advance request — and then have a physician end their life after they have lost the ability to consent themselves.

But that raises a separate, challenging, question: After people lose the capacity to request an assisted death, who should decide it’s time?

Their spouses? Their children? Their doctors? The government? Colombia entrusts families with this role. The Netherlands leaves it up to doctors — but many refuse to do it, unwilling to administer lethal drugs to a patient who can’t clearly articulate a rational wish to die.

Jan Grijpma was always clear with his daughter, Maria: When his mind went, he didn’t want to live any more. Maria worked with his longtime family doctor, in Amsterdam, to identify the point when Mr. Grijpma, 90 and living in a nursing home, was losing his ability to consent himself.

When it seemed close, in 2023, they booked the day, and he updated his day planner: Thursday, visit the vicar; Friday, bicycle with physiotherapy and get a haircut; Sunday, pancakes with Maria; Monday, euthanasia.

All of these questions are becoming part of the discussion as the right to control and plan one’s own death is pushed in front of reluctant legislatures and uneasy medical professionals.

Dr. Madeline Li, a Toronto psychiatrist, was given the task of developing the assisted-dying practice in one of Canada’s largest hospitals when the procedure was first decriminalized in 2015. She began with assessing patients for eligibility and then moved to providing medical assistance in dying, or MAID, as it is called in Canada. For some patients with terminal cancer, it felt like the best form of care she could offer, she said.

But then Canada’s eligibility criteria expanded, and Dr. Li found herself confronting a different kind of patient.

“To provide assisted dying to somebody dying of a condition who is not happy with how they’re going to die, I’m willing to assist them, and hasten that death,” she said. “I struggle more with people who aren’t dying and want MAID — I think then you’re assisting suicide. If you’re not dying — if I didn’t give you MAID, you wouldn’t otherwise die — then you’re a person who’s not unhappy with how you’re going to die. You’re unhappy with how you’re living.”

Who has broken the taboo?

For decades, Switzerland was the only country to permit assisted death; assisted suicide was legalized there in 1942. It took a further half century for a few more countries to loosen their laws. Now decriminalization of some form of assisted death has occurred across Europe.

But there has recently been a wave of legalization in Latin America, where Colombia was long an outlier, having allowed legal assisted dying since 2015.

Paola Roldán Espinosa had a thriving career in business in Ecuador, and a toddler, when she was diagnosed with A.L.S. in 2023. Her health soon deteriorated to the point that she needed a ventilator.

She wanted to die on her terms — and took the case to the country’s highest court. In February 2024, the court responded to her petition by decriminalizing assisted dying. Ms. Roldán, then 42, had the death she sought, with her family around her, a month later.

Ecuador has decriminalized assisted dying through constitutional court cases, and Peru’s Supreme Court has permitted individual exceptions to the law which prohibits the procedure, opening the door to expansion. Cuba’s national assembly legalized assisted dying in 2023, although no regulations on how the procedure will work are yet in place. In October, Uruguay’s parliament passed a long-debated law allowing assisted death for the terminally ill.

The first country in Asia to take steps toward legalization is South Korea, where a bill to decriminalize assisted death has been proposed at the National Assembly several times but has not come to a vote. At the same time, the Constitutional Court, which for years refused to hear cases on the subject, has agreed to adjudicate a petition from a disabled man with severe and chronic pain who seeks an assisted death.

Access in the United States remains limited: 11 jurisdictions (10 states plus the District of Columbia) allow assisted suicide or physician-assisted death, for patients who have a terminal diagnosis, and in some cases, only for patients who are already in hospice care. It will become legal in Delaware on Jan. 1, 2026.

In Slovenia, in 2024, 55 percent of the population who voted in a national referendum were in favor of legalizing assisted death, and parliament duly passed a law in July. But pushback from right-wing politicians then forced a new referendum, and in late November, 54 percent of those who voted rejected the legalization.

And in the United Kingdom, a bill to legalize assisted death for people with terminal illness has made its way slowly through parliament. It has faced fierce opposition from a coalition of more than 60 groups for people with disabilities, who argue they may face subtle coercion to end their lives rather than drain their families or the state of resources for their care.

Why now?

In many countries, decriminalization of assisted dying has followed the expansion of rights for personal choice in other areas, such as the removal of restrictions on same-sex marriage, abortion and sometimes drug use.

“I would expect it to be on the agenda in every liberal democracy,” said Wayne Sumner, a medical ethicist at the University of Toronto who studies the evolution of norms and regulations around assisted dying. “They’ll come to it at their own speed, but it follows with these other policies.”

The change is also being driven by a convergence of political, demographic and cultural trends.

As populations age, and access to health care improves, more people are living longer. Older populations mean more chronic disease, and more people living with compromised health. And they are thinking about death, and what they will — and won’t — be willing to tolerate in the last years of their lives.

At the same time, there is diminishing tolerance for suffering that is perceived as unnecessary.

“Until very recently, we were a society where few people lived past 60 — and now suddenly we live much longer,” said Lina Paola Lara Negrette, a psychologist who until October was the director of the Dying With Dignity Foundation in Colombia. “Now people here need to think about the system, and the services that are available, and what they will want.”

Changes in family structures and communities, particularly in rapidly urbanizing middle-income countries, mean that traditional networks of care are less strong, which shifts how people can imagine living in older age or with chronic illness, she added.

“When you had many siblings and a lot of generations under one roof, the question of care was a family thing,” she said. “That has changed. And it shapes how we think about living, and dying.”

How does assisted dying work?

Beyond the ethical dilemmas, actually carrying out legalized assisted deaths involves countless choices for countries. Spain requires a waiting period of at least 15 days between a patient’s assessments (but the average wait in practice is 75 days). In most other places, the prescribed wait is less than two weeks for patients with terminal conditions, but often longer in practice, said Katrine Del Villar, a professor of constitutional law at the Queensland University of Technology who tracks trends in assisted dying

Most countries allow patients to choose between administering the drugs themselves or having a health care provider do it. When both options are available, the overwhelming majority of people choose to have a health care provider end their life with an injection that stops their heart.

In many countries only a doctor can administer the drugs, but Canada and New Zealand permit nurse practitioners to provide medically assisted deaths too.

One Australian state prohibits medical professionals from raising the topic of assisted death. A patient must ask about it first.

Who determines eligibility is another issue. In the Netherlands, two physicians assess a patient; in Colombia, it’s a panel consisting of a medical specialist, a psychologist and a lawyer. The draft legislation in Britain would require both a panel and two independent physicians.

Switzerland and the states of Oregon and Vermont are the only jurisdictions in the world that explicitly allow people who are not residents access to assisted deaths.

Most countries permit medical professionals to conscientiously object to providing assisted deaths and allow faith-based medical institutions to refuse to participate. In Canada, individual professionals have the right to refuse, but a court challenge is underway seeking to end the ability of hospitals that are controlled by faith-based organizations and that operate with public funds to refuse to allow assisted deaths on their premises.

“Even when assisted dying has been legal and available somewhere for a long time, there can be a gap between what is legal and what is acceptable — what most physicians and patients and families feel comfortable with,” said Dr. Sisco van Veen, an ethicist and psychiatrist at Amsterdam Medical University. “And this isn’t static. It evolves over time.”

Jin Yu Young in Seoul, José Bautista in Madrid, José María León Cabrera in Quito, Veerle Schyns in Amsterdam and Koba Ryckewaert in Brussels contributed reporting.

India plans to continue buying cheap crude oil from Russia, despite sanctions imposed on major Russian oil companies by the United States and Europe.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with Russian President Vladimir Putin for the Russia-India annual bilateral summit in New Delhi last week, during which Putin said: “Russia is ready for uninterrupted shipments of fuel to India.”

India is the second-largest consumer of Russian oil after China and is facing intense pressure from the US to stop buying it. Earlier this year, the administration of US President Donald Trump doubled trade tariffs on Indian goods to 50 percent, in part because of this issue, Trump said at the time.

Here is what we know about India’s imports of Russian oil, and how New Delhi has managed to keep its petroleum purchases from Moscow afloat in spite of sanctions and pressure.

How did India become such a big consumer of Russian oil?

In 2021, prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian oil constituted around 2.5 percent of India’s total oil imports, according to figures from the US Energy Information Administration published in February this year.

After the war began, Europe and the US began placing sanctions on Russian companies to economically isolate Moscow.

Overall, since the beginning of the war, the US and its allies have imposed more than 21,000 sanctions on Russia, targeting individuals, media organisations, the military, and sectors that include energy, aviation, shipbuilding and telecommunications.

Crucially, however, in December 2022, the Group of Seven (G7), the European Union and Australia placed a cap on the price of Russian oil at $60 per barrel, ostensibly to reduce Russia’s ability to fund its war in Ukraine. The cap was later reduced to around $48 by the EU and the United Kingdom. This made Russian oil more attractive to purchasers, particularly India and China. Russia has sold crude oil to India at steeply discounted rates, dropping as low as $35 per barrel in March 2022.

By contrast, Brent crude oil is currently trading at around $62.50 per barrel.

How much oil is India buying from Russia?

In October 2024, India’s purchases of Russian crude petroleum reached a historic high of $5.8bn.

At the end of that month, the US imposed new sanctions on hundreds of Russian individuals and entities. These include Russian shipowners, vessels and traders involved in shipping Russian crude.

In November 2024, India’s crude petroleum imports from Russia dropped to $3.9bn and by December 2024, India was importing even less oil from Russia, worth $3.2bn.

However, in January 2025, Indian imports of Russian oil from Russia bounced back up to $3.6bn. Since then, volumes of imports have fluctuated.

What pressure is India facing to stop buying Russian oil?

In August this year, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said India’s purchases of Russian crude oil were funding Moscow’s war in Ukraine and must stop.

“India acts as a global clearinghouse for Russian oil, converting embargoed crude into high-value exports while giving Moscow the dollars it needs,” Navarro wrote in an opinion piece published in the Financial Times.

In August, Washington also doubled trade tariffs on Indian goods to 50 percent as a punishment for India buying Russian oil.

In October, Trump claimed that Modi had pledged to stop buying oil from Russia.

“So I was not happy that India was buying oil, and he assured me today that they will not be buying oil from Russia,” Trump told reporters during a White House event.

“That’s a big step. Now we’re going to get China to do the same thing.”

But during an interview with Indian broadcasters during the Russia-India annual bilateral summit on December 4, Putin scoffed at Trump’s claim. “The United States itself still buys nuclear fuel from us for its own nuclear power plants,” he said. In 2023, US imports of enriched uranium from Russia hit a record high in over a decade, worth about $1.2bn.

If the US has the right to buy Russian fuel, he added, India should enjoy “the same privilege”.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov repeated this sentiment during a call with reporters on Monday this week, when he said: “India, as a sovereign state, conducts foreign trade operations and purchases energy resources where it is beneficial for India, and as far as we understand, our Indian partners will continue this policy to ensure their economic interests.”

Why have sanctions on Russian oil caused a spike in Indian imports?

On October 22 this year, Trump imposed US sanctions on two of Russia’s largest oil producers, Rosneft and Lukoil. It was the first time during his second term as US president that Washington had imposed sanctions related to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The US sanctions came the same day that the EU approved its own 19th package of sanctions on Russia, and one week after the UK also sanctioned Rosneft and Lukoil.

The US sanctions were set to come into effect on November 21, after which purchases from US-sanctioned entities Rosneft and Lukoil would be restricted, giving Indian importers a window to ramp up purchases ahead of the deadline.

One day after the US sanctions were announced, state refiners in India, including Indian Oil Corp, Bharat Petroleum Corp and Hindustan Petroleum Corp, began reviewing their Russian oil purchases, Reuters reported, citing an unnamed source with direct knowledge of the matter.

In October, India imported $3.55bn worth of crude petroleum from Russia, according to figures from the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, reported in Indian media. While this was not as high as the $5.8bn value of crude petroleum India purchased from Russia in October 2024, it showed that India was still buying more oil than it was before the war in Ukraine broke out.

In early November, however, India ramped up its imports of Russian oil. India’s crude oil imports increased by 220,000 barrels per day, reaching 5 million barrels per day, according to energy market intelligence firm Vortexa. This was a seasonal peak, nearly matching the record high of 5.05 million barrels per day set in March 2025.

India’s refining sector consists of three main categories of operators: National Oil Companies (NOCs), which are state‑owned, public sector refiners; Reliance Industries, which is privately owned, with a diverse crude sourcing strategy; and Nayara Energy, a Russian‑majority‑owned private refiner.

The EU sanctioned Nayara in July 2025 over its links to Russia. Since then, however, it has doubled down on buying exclusively Russian crude, significantly increasing its intake.

With sanctions already in place, the company appears to see little downside in deepening its reliance on Russian oil. By late October, Nayara had ramped up crude processing at its Vadinar Refinery in Gujarat to 90-93 percent of capacity, Reuters reported, citing unnamed sources. That fell to 70 to 80 percent of capacity in July following the EU sanctions.

Overall, however, it is clear that India is continuing to import Russian oil. While sanctions have led to India scaling back on Russian oil purchases to some degree, New Delhi is still projected to buy 600,000 barrels of oil per day in January. This may be well below the 1.6 million to 1.8 million barrels it has been importing in recent months, but not zero, Bloomberg reported.

How will India continue to import Russian oil?

Rosneft and Lukoil account for around 60 percent of the Russian oil purchased by India, Reuters reported in October, citing Prashant Vashisht, vice president at ICRA Ltd, an Indian credit rating agency. Citing Russian government agencies, S&P Global said Rosneft accounts for almost half of all Russian oil production and 6 percent of global output.

India, therefore, will have to turn to other sources for its Russian oil imports. This is likely to include companies such as Surgutneftegaz, which was never fully affected by sanctions.

India has also purchased oil from Gazprom Neft, which faces sectoral sanctions rather than being fully sanctioned. This means that the US has put limits on some activities, but has not completely banned doing business with the company.

India could also purchase Russian oil via a shadow fleet of older tankers using non-Western insurance and flags, which can often bypass sanctions.

Between January and September this year, India imported 5.4 million tonnes of Russian oil carried by 30 vessels sailing under false flags, according to a report published in November by the European think tank the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).