Much like any other Australian teen, 17-year-old Leo Puglisi is weighing options for the future as he comes towards the end of his final year of high school. 

But unlike many of his peers, he has already established himself as a respected journalist, having begun reporting at just 11 years old. 

Now bearing the hefty titles of founder, managing director and chief anchor of 6 News Australia, Puglisi is watching the government restrict young people’s access to the platforms on which he honed his craft and built his career. 

He tells PIJI he understands the intention of the upcoming social media ban for under-16s, but is confident it will not be effective. 

“I certainly recognise there’s harmful content online. I want that to be addressed; the government has its own measures to address that, like the eSafety Commissioner,” he says. 

“The ban does not remove that content. It doesn’t actually address it.  

“It just punishes the teenagers who happen to have a YouTube account. I think that’s a big problem with the ban.”

6 News currently boasts more than 35,000 YouTube followers, more than 43,000 on X (formerly Twitter), more than 53,000 on TikTok and thousands on Instagram and Facebook.   

In addition to Puglisi, 6 News is run by a team of young journalists aged approximately between 14 to 21. 

If a social media ban for under-16s had existed when he was younger, Puglisi says it would have been “impossible” to create 6 News, but this is not the basis for his main concerns around the upcoming ban. 

Instead, he says it will simply be ineffective. 

He shared this opinion last year when speaking in front of a parliamentary committee, and was not alone in his assessment. Groups like the eSafety Youth Council and the Butterfly Foundation also questioned the effectiveness and need of a blanket social media ban.  

In its final report, the committee did not recommend an age-based social media ban. But just over a week after the report’s release, legislation for an under-16 social media ban passed the parliament with bipartisan support. 

Puglisi warns harmful online content will still be visible to young people browsing without accounts, or with their parent’s log-in details.  

He also thinks the ban risks pushing young people to ‘underground’ platforms that are less monitored than mainstream social media, and is concerned about what kind of personal information Australians will be forced to hand over to companies like X and Meta for age-confirmation. 

He says the blanket ban does not account for “nuances”: “It doesn’t account for parents who are happy for their 15-year-old to have a YouTube account.” 

“It certainly doesn’t account for kids in marginalised communities or remote areas, where they maybe use social media as a bit of an escape and that’s really helped them, and then suddenly it’s going to be stripped away from them.” 

YouTube hobby-turned-career 

For as long as he can remember, Puglisi was drawn to the news. 

From watching ABC News in a high-chair as a baby to avidly keeping track of election coverage as a 10-year-old, it seems a career in journalism was always on the cards. 

When his public school received iPads as part of a government initiative, Puglisi says he was introduced to video-editing for school projects, and everything fell into place. 

Starting under the tag ‘HMV Local News’ on YouTube in 2019, he began presenting short homemade bulletins with stories ranging from the lack of council action on flood-damage to a local park, to the impact of proposed federal budget tax cuts.  

Rebranded as 6 News Australia in 2020, Covid lockdowns gave Puglisi more time to work on his news updates – and saw him begin to make a name for himself by beating mainstream media to breaking stories.  

All the while, his parents monitored his accounts to make sure viewer comments were “appropriate”. 

“Parents are cautious when your child’s online but [they] were always, and still absolutely are, unbelievably supportive,” Puglisi says. 

By 2022, he was interviewing then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Opposition leader Anthony Albanese in the lead-up to the federal election. 

As of 2025, Puglisi leads a team of about 12 young journalists. He has also written for the Guardian and Crikey. 

“From the outset, never planned to make it some business or expand a team or anything … So I’m very lucky and grateful to get to the point I am at now,” he says. 

“[We built up an audience through] consistency, because we were just doing it literally day in, day out, constant updates, and I made sure that we were always in feeds … When it’s a 12-year-old presenting the news, you’re going to get a lot of speculation and scepticism, for obvious reasons… [but I] always had great support from existing journos in the industry. 

“I’m proud to say we’ve got a track record at this point we can help hold ourselves to … Nowadays, a lot of people are turning to us, and it’s always great to see more and more comments [like], ‘I saw this first on 6 News,’ or ‘You’re my main source of news.’” 

Written by Sezen Bakan