In late 2025, Australia implemented a world-first social media ban for children under the age of 16. The first-of-its-kind age restriction laws has led wordsmiths at The Australian National University (ANU) to choose the phrase social media ban as their Word of the Year for 2025.
Although the Australian eSafety Commissioner prefers the term 'social media delay', it is the phrase social media ban that has become the default way of describing the new restrictions.
Each year the Australian National Dictionary Centre, based at ANU, selects a word, phrase, or expression that has gained prominence in the Australian landscape over the past 12 months.
The Centre's Director Dr Amanda Laugesen said the phrase's frequency has increased dramatically since the introduction of the Social Media Minimum Age Bill in Parliament in November last year.
"With the law recently coming into effect, Australians are starting to pay more attention to what the 'ban' means for them," Dr Laugesen said.
"While children will be restricted in how they can access popular sites like TikTok, Facebook and Instagram, adults are also wondering how age-verification technology will impact them.
"Not only is this legislation a world-first but it's also an experiment in how governments can restrict access to the internet and what measures can be taken to minimise harm to those most vulnerable in the community.
"The phrase social media ban will be a term we come across frequently in the coming months as we assess the law's effectiveness in protecting children and the impacts on adult access to social media sites."
The Centre's Word of the Year shortlist is made up of terms that say something about the past year in Australia.
The full 2025 shortlist includes:
- drop croc: an extinct mekosuchine crocodile that may have hunted their prey from trees. The word came to wide attention this year when the findings of a study of 55-million-year-old eggshells found in Queensland was published. (Drop croc is a play on the mythical Australian drop bear.)
- answer engine: a program or platform that uses artificial intelligence to provide concise answers to a question rather than providing a list of webpages as a search engine does. (With the continuing integration of AI technology into everyday life we are now becoming familiar with the AI summaries provided to our queries and searches on the internet.)
- Temu: used as an adjective to describe something of poor quality; denoting an inferior copy or poor substitute. (From Temu, proprietary name of an online shop selling cheap products.)
- nature laws: legislation relating to the protection of Australia's environment, biodiversity, etc. (Various pieces of legislation, including the Environment Protection Reform Bill, to overhaul laws that have been widely considered to not be working have been central to national political debate this year.)
The Australian National Dictionary Centre researches Australian English in partnership with Oxford University Press Australia and New Zealand, and edits Oxford's Australian dictionaries.
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. OUP is the world's largest university press with the widest global presence.
