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Meta urges Australia to rethink under-16 social media ban
Meta has called on the Australian government to reconsider its ban on social media use for those under 16, after removing nearly 550,000 accounts believed to belong to teens in December.
Australia’s Online Safety Amendment Act 2024, which took effect on December 11, 2025 requires major platforms including Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit, and others to block users under 16, and implement age verification systems.
Meta said it removed about 330,000 Instagram accounts, 173,500 Facebook accounts, and nearly 40,000 Threads accounts linked to underage users in one week.
The company argued for industry-wide standards to create safer, age-appropriate experiences online instead of blanket bans, and highlighted its work with nonprofit OpenAge Initiative on new age verification tools.
Some teens have reportedly switched to unregulated or alternative apps, or used VPNs and parents’ accounts to get around the law.
🔗 Source: CNBC
🧠 Food for thought
Implications, context, and why it matters.
Enforcement depends on undefined “reasonable steps” and industry codes
- The Online Safety Amendment Act 2024 (the Act) requires “reasonable steps” to block under-16 access, yet it does not specify methods, and penalties can reach AUD 49.5 million 1.
- Guidance from Australia’s eSafety commissioner says steps should match risk, and re-verification of all existing users may be unreasonable 2. Clarity will grow when Phase 2 Industry Codes (regulator-approved, co-developed standards under the Act) roll out, and enforcement decisions arrive 3.
- Self-declaration is insufficient, and analyses aligned with eSafety say platforms should detect circumvention, including Virtual Private Network (VPN) use 43. The bar for “active detection” versus best-effort compliance stays unclear until cases arrive and the statutory independent review of Part 4A occurs within two years of commencement 5.
Tech providers can build compliance infrastructure under tight privacy rules
- Section 63F sets privacy controls for age assurance 5. Platforms must isolate this data then destroy it after the stated purpose 5. That drives demand for privacy-preserving tools.
- The Age Assurance Technology Trial found no single tool works in every context 6. Vendors can offer mixes of verification, estimation, or inference 6. Adopters align with ISO/IEC (International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission) 27566 and IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) 2089.1 6.
- Similar rules are emerging in Florida plus Norway, with the UK and the EU (European Union) moving too 3. Providers that build in Australia gain a base for expansion as governments put more online safety duty on platforms 3.
