The three apps that actually make sense after Australia’s social media ban

Australia’s social media ban for under 16s on December 10 is not a glitch in the system. It is the logical outcome of a decade where the big platforms refused to seriously protect kids, even while the evidence of harm stacked up.

Endless feeds, addictive design, algorithmic amplification of insecurity and drama, weak age checks, and a lot of PR about “safety” that changed almost nothing. Parents raised alarms. Researchers produced data. Regulators held hearings. The companies kept shipping growth hacks.

So now the state is doing what the platforms would not: drawing a hard line.

Predictably, teenagers are not just rolling over and going offline forever. They are already moving to apps that feel smaller, safer and more focused on real friends. Yope is literally topping Australian download charts in the lead up to the ban, as teens scramble for alternatives that do not feel like TikTok with a different logo. (News.com.au)

In that world, three products actually make sense: Favs, Coverstar and Yope. They are not perfect and they are not the same, but they are all built around one simple idea that the old social giants ignored: if you are designing for kids and close friends, safety and intention are not optional. They are the product.

Here is what they really are and where they fit.

Favs - the private social network that is built for real friends, not followers

Favs is not trying to become another public stage. It is a private social app for your real friends where you do not chase followers, likes or reach. There are no followers, no ads and no algorithms deciding what you see. You add only the people you actually care about and everything stays inside that small circle. (App Store)

Instead of a global feed, Favs is closer to a digital living room. You post quick updates, share small moments, set a status like “free for a call” or “need advice,” and nudge people to say “I am thinking of you.” It is built to help you remember important dates and details about your people rather than to keep you stuck in an infinite scroll. (favshq.com)

This matters in a post ban world because it fixes the core problem big social never wants to admit: kids and teens do not need a giant audience. They need a sane way to stay close to a handful of important people without being dragged into public metrics, toxic comparisons and strangers in their comments.

Favs works best for slightly older teens and young adults who want something calmer and more intentional. It is not a kids’ entertainment app. It is a “keep your inner circle tight” app. In the gap left by Instagram and Snapchat for under 16s, this is the product that teaches a healthier default: fewer people, deeper connection and no performance layer on top of every interaction.

Coverstar - TikTok energy without TikTok risk

Most kids are not leaving because they suddenly hate short video. They are leaving because TikTok is a mess from a safety point of view for minors. That is where Coverstar comes in.

Coverstar positions itself as a safe and positive social platform that feels familiar to kids who grew up on TikTok, but with hard safety rails. You record short videos, join challenges, explore trends and connect with a community. The difference is in the rules: no bullying, no explicit content, no direct messaging and heavy human moderation on everything that goes up. (Coverstar)

For parents, that means a few things:

• Predators cannot quietly slide into private DMs.

• Explicit content is actively removed rather than just “downranked.”

• The vibe is meant to be positive and drama free, not chaos for engagement.

For kids, it means you still get creative, expressive social video, but the environment is more like a supervised studio than a dark public alley. It will never be perfect and bad content can still slip through, but the intent is obviously different from the “anything goes as long as watch time goes up” model that ruled the last decade. (Coverstar)

Coverstar is a good fit for the 9 to 16 range who want to make videos, follow daily challenges and feel part of something, without being thrown into the full chaos of mainstream social video. It is essentially a safer on ramp that respects how vulnerable that age group actually is.

Yope - your shared camera roll with the people you actually care about

Yope is what happens when you strip social media down to one primitive: send a real picture to your close friends and see theirs on your phone without all the extra nonsense.

It is a friends only photo sharing app where you send real photos to a small circle and they show up instantly on your friends’ lock screens and widgets. No feed chasing engagement. No audience of strangers. No pressure to perform. On Instagram you are performing. On Yope you are just living. (App Store)

Under the hood, it is basically a private, shared camera roll. You create a friends only profile, albums function like secret folders that only you and invited friends can see, and the whole thing is about cherishing memories together instead of building a public brand. (Instagram)

That is exactly why it is already surging in Australia before the ban kicks in. Teens want a way to share their day that feels intimate and light weight without being sucked into a giant network. Yope nails that tradeoff. It gives just enough structure and fun to feel like a modern app, but it keeps the social graph tight and private. (News.com.au)

In a post ban world, Yope becomes the obvious choice for groups of friends who want to stay close visually without the feeling that every image is content for a crowd.

What these three say about where social is going

If you zoom out, Favs, Coverstar and Yope are all reacting to the same failure from the old guard. Big social treated kids as just smaller adults with slightly different settings. That was lazy and irresponsible. Safety was an overlay, not the foundation.

These apps flip that order.

Favs starts at “only real friends, no public audience at all.”
Coverstar starts at “creative video, but safety and moderation are the main product, not a buried setting.”
Yope starts at “private photos with a tiny circle, no likes, no public followers and no pressure to perform.”

Together they sketch the next phase of social after the ban:

• Smaller networks instead of massive broadcast platforms

• Private by default instead of public by default

• Human moderation and hard constraints instead of “we will tweak the algorithm later”

• Real world closeness and memory over viral reach

Will kids still try to sneak back onto the big platforms with VPNs and fake ages. Of course. But the existence and growth of apps like these shows that there is real demand for something healthier. Teens are not asking for more sugar coated safety language from the same companies that built the problem. They are asking for different products entirely.

Australia’s ban is blunt, and it will have edge cases and legal fights. That is all fine. The important point is this: once a country has decided that kids under 16 do not belong inside industrial scale attention machines, suddenly products like Favs, Coverstar and Yope stop looking like niche alternatives and start looking like the baseline.

The big platforms had a decade to fix themselves. They chose growth. Now the only products that deserve to survive in a post ban world are the ones that put kids and close friendships first and are willing to design around that constraint from day one.

If you care about what replaces TikTok and Instagram for the next generation, stop looking at who can copy their features fastest. Start paying attention to the apps that were built for small circles, real safety and real friends from the beginning.