Retailers are now expected to be age cops for every phone sale

A cleaner ban with a dirty problem

ACT leader David Seymour has spent years opposing social media bans as unworkable and illiberal. So his floating of a smartphone ban for under-16s looked, to some, like a reversal. In a 1 August op-ed for the NZ Herald, he insists it is not. His case against a social media ban is blunt: “Australia’s ban is almost totally ineffective. Almost all the kids who were on social media before are still on it after the ban.” Making it work, he argues, would require banning VPNs and forcing every adult to hand government ID to every platform, tools he calls “North Korean” in character. “You can have the ban, or a free society, but not both.”

His alternative, floated at the Graeme Dingle Foundation Business Leaders’ Dinner on 15 July, is to regulate the physical device instead. Parliament would define a “dumb phone” fit for under-16s and prohibit the purchase, possession and supply of smartphones to that age group, allowing only devices that call and text. He compares it to age limits on vapes, cigarettes and alcohol. Regulating a physical object, he argues, is “considerably easier than attempting to police constantly updating technology platforms”.

Easier to legislate, perhaps. The question business owners should ask is easier for whom to comply with.

The harm case is real

Seymour is not inventing a crisis. He points to Ministry of Health survey data showing mental distress among 15-24 year olds has climbed from roughly 5% fifteen years ago to nearly 23% now, with young women at 29%. Distress has “quadrupled among the young”, and the trend tracks smartphone adoption. His line that “kids are not merely social media users, they are the product” is hard to argue with. The problem is the delivery mechanism, not the diagnosis.

What is a phone, legally?

The idea collapses at the definition. A basic Android handset with a SIM runs social media apps. A feature phone with Wi-Fi does too. Seymour himself has raised questions about whether YouTube, WhatsApp and Discord would be caught, which tells you the line between a “dumb phone” and a smartphone is not obvious even to the person proposing to draw it in law.

Retailers cannot comply with a rule that does not exist yet. Any point-of-sale prohibition would force them to verify a buyer’s age, as they already do for alcohol and tobacco, but against a product category that shifts with every firmware update. Until Parliament defines the device, retailers face liability they cannot manage and shelves they cannot confidently stock.

The burden lands on the supply chain

Because the proposal covers possession and supply, not just purchase, the reach extends well past the checkout. Telcos activating SIMs would need to verify account-holder age, layering a new obligation onto a sector already carrying substantial compliance weight documented in the 2025 Telecommunications Monitoring Report. Platforms, though the ban is device-level, would still field questions about their status once the app definitions blur. And schools, which Seymour suggests could receive government guidance against student smartphones, would inherit enforcement dressed up as advice. Guidance that carries legal weight is enforcement, and someone on school property has to police it.

This is how a “simple” product rule becomes a compliance market. Age verification, staff training, liability insurance, legal advice on what counts as a supply, and audit trails all cost money, and none of it falls on the platforms that engineered the problem.

The workaround problem Seymour already knows

The critics’ central objection is one Seymour makes himself against social media bans. Newsroom argues restrictions push young people toward less-regulated spaces and discourage them from seeking help if they think they have broken the law. Seymour concedes the point about social media bans, writing that young people “will still access social media, but feel less able to talk to adults” if they fear they have done something illegal. That logic applies just as neatly to a device ban. In May 2025, University of Auckland and Waikato experts told the Science Media Centre that a blanket ban without an education strategy delays the problem rather than solving it, and that digital natives find workarounds.

Not policy, but not theoretical

Seymour is clear this is a concept for discussion, not government policy. But ACT has a track record of moving ideas from speech to statute, on euthanasia, regulatory reform and the online harms inquiry. Businesses in retail, telecommunications and education would be unwise to file this under hypothetical. If the definitional work ever begins, the sectors that would have to enforce it should be in the room before Parliament decides, in law, what a phone actually is.

Sources

• A phone ban for kids is not a rethink of my solution for social media harm – David Seymour (2026-08-01)
• David Seymour suggests smartphones could be banned for under-16s (2026-07-15)
• David Seymour floats a smartphone ban for under 16s as an alternative to New Zealand’s stalled social media ban (2026-07-15)
• David Seymour’s Speech At Graeme Dingle Foundation Business Leaders’ Dinner (2026-07-15)
• Banning social media misses the real crises (2026-07-17)
• Should we ban social media for under-16s? – Expert Q&A (2025-05-16)
• 2025 Telecommunications Monitoring Report (2026-06-29)