Australia tightens teen social-media ban after study shows little impact
More than 85% of under-16s were still using restricted platforms, pushing Canberra toward fines, court action and tougher age checks.
Anthony Albanese said Australia will make its under-16 social-media restrictions “as strong as possible” as the government prepares legal action against five major platforms after a BMJ study found the ban had barely changed teen use. The fight has shifted from passing the law to enforcing it.
The policy sits on the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024, which was assented to on December 10, 2024 and took effect one year later. eSafety says the age-restricted platforms include Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, X, YouTube, Kick and Reddit, and the regulator’s March 2026 compliance update said it was focusing on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube because under-16s were still keeping or creating accounts or getting around age checks. Platforms that systematically fail to comply face fines of up to A$49.5 million.
The BMJ observational study, published June 24, 2026, found limited early effect on adolescent social-media use. More than 85% of under-16s were still using restricted platforms, and the study identified circumvention through fake accounts and accounts belonging to friends or family. That evidence undercuts the law’s central promise and puts age verification, rather than legislation alone, at the center of the policy debate.
The government is now preparing to test how far it can push platforms to police access in practice. The Minister for Communications made the Online Safety (Age-Restricted Social Media Platforms) Rules 2025 in July 2025, and those rules were amended in March 2026, the same month eSafety sharpened its compliance focus. Reddit is separately challenging the law in Australia’s highest court on free-speech grounds, adding a legal fight to the technical one over whether platforms can reliably block under-16s without collecting more personal data.
Australia’s approach has been watched closely overseas because it is one of the first national attempts to impose a hard minimum age on social media. The government launched a joint parliamentary select committee in May 2024 to examine the effects of social media on Australians before the law passed, and the latest enforcement push shows Canberra is not backing away from the policy even as the first evidence suggests many teens are still finding a way in. The next test is whether regulators can turn age limits into something platforms actually have to prove, not just promise.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
