A Sydney high school student is set to take the Albanese government all the way to the High Court over its social media ban, just two weeks before its enforced.
Noah Jones, 15, said the ban, which blocks children under the age of 16 from Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, X, and YouTube, is doomed to fail.
'As a free Australian I should be able to express myself and in the modern world, that's online through social media,' Noah told the Daily Mail.
'Kids will still use social media but in secret and they are (in) more danger by being scared of getting into trouble for using socials after the ban so they won't report bullies or predators.
'Nearly everyone I know intends to get around the ban but not tell their parents.'
Noah, who turns 16 next August, said his friends were planning to bypass the age restrictions by making fake profiles on other platforms.
He also said he was 'very confident' in the success of the high court challenge.
'The High Court know it's so important that the government shouldn't stop my right to democracy. Democracy doesn't start at 16 on your birthday,' he said.
Ironically, Noah learned about the impending ban on social media.
'The problem is with that, if they're being secretive about it, they can't report anyone or say something to parents or police because they weren't supposed to be on the platform in the first place, so they're at more risk,' he said.
Noah has been named along with fellow 15-year-old Macy Neyland as the two plaintiffs in the case filed by NSW Libertarian MP John Ruddick on Wednesday.
Noah's mum, Renee Jones, said the government should work with platforms to crack down on unsafe online content rather than removing children from the digital space.
'We have deliberately raised these children to be digitally aware,' Ms Jones, a former primary school teacher turned lawyer, told Daily Mail on Friday.
'I've heard Noah and his friends talk about, "Why are we being punished? We're not the ones doing the wrong thing?"'
'This is not a family who doesn't recognise the horror of parts of the online world... Noah knows what needs to be reported; he talks to his friends about it; and that was the kind of reform I needed from my government rather than cast them out.'
Ms Jones warned children will 'go secretive if they believe they'll get in trouble.'
'Who is their safe person to tell if they are approached by a predator online and they weren't supposed to be there? They will not tell us,' she said.
The court action, which was filed via Ruddick's organisation Digital Freedom Project, argues the ban will rob 2.6 million young people of their constitutionally implied right to freedom of political communication.
The federal government, Communications Minister Anika Wells and the eSafety commissioner have all been named as respondents in the case.
The group hopes to win an injunction that would delay the law from coming into effect, with a court date set to be scheduled in the next few days.
Ms Jones said she is 'incredibly confident' the case will be upheld in the High Court.
'The constitution does not let the government shut down political communication just because these Australians are young,' she said. 'They have a right to that discourse.'
Under the ban, social media platforms can accept ID as one form of age check, but its not allowed to be the sole method of identification.
Currently, children under the age of 16 will be kicked off the platforms on December 10
Both Meta and Snap Inc, which runs the popular app Snapchat, said they will use ID checks as a fallback option.
It comes as reports suggest that teens are finding ways around the ban as obscure social media apps start to appear in Australia's AppStore charts.
According to analytics platform Sensor Tower, a largely unknown group chat platform called Yope is the top app in the charts, indicating a spike in downloads.
This coinciding with videos circulating online that promote similar apps to the ones on the banned list suggest teens could be getting ready to jump ship.
'So we all using this Yope app for the ban,' one TikTok user said this week.
'Lemon 8 is the (TikTok) replacement and Yope is (Snapchat) replacement,' another wrote in the comments of the video.
The communications minister responded to the legal challenge in parliament this week, saying she and her government would be standing firm.
'Despite the fact that we are receiving threats and legal challenges by people with ulterior motives, the Albanese Labor government remains steadfastly on the side of parents, and not of platforms,' Wells said.
'We will not be intimidated by threats. We will not be intimidated by legal challenges.
'We will not be intimidated by big tech on the behalf of Australian parents.'