Australia’s under-16 social media ban is facing fresh scrutiny as major technology companies urge lawmakers to be cautious about drawing firm conclusions from the first set of compliance figures. Representatives from Meta, Google, Snapchat and TikTok appeared before a Senate inquiry as lawmakers examined whether the landmark restrictions are achieving their intended purpose and whether stronger penalties should be introduced.
The debate comes several months after Australia introduced rules designed to prevent children under 16 from maintaining accounts on major social media platforms. The policy has attracted international attention because it represents one of the most significant attempts by a government to restrict young teenagers’ access to social networking services. Supporters see the measure as an important step toward protecting children online, while technology companies have raised concerns about how accurately age verification systems can identify users and how quickly the effectiveness of the new rules can be assessed.
Australian lawmakers questioned executives about research suggesting that a large proportion of children were continuing to use social media despite the restrictions. Some studies, including information from the country’s internet safety regulator, indicated that around 80% of minors were still using social media several months after the rules came into effect in December. The figures have intensified questions about whether platforms are successfully preventing underage users from creating or maintaining accounts.
The Senate hearing highlighted a clear disagreement between lawmakers and technology companies over how those numbers should be interpreted. The eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, said early evidence suggested the restrictions were beginning to have an impact, although she acknowledged that the change so far had been relatively modest. She argued that the effectiveness of the law should be judged over a longer period, particularly as enforcement becomes more active.
“We are seeing change but we need to give it time,” Inman Grant said.
She also suggested that stronger enforcement could gradually alter user behaviour as platforms become more effective at identifying and removing accounts belonging to children below the permitted age.
“Once that active enforcement starts, that’s when the behaviour starts to change.”
The regulator has been examining whether some social media companies have been too slow in implementing the new requirements. The issue has become particularly important because Australia’s approach is being watched by governments in other countries that are considering similar restrictions. If the Australian model is seen as ineffective, it could influence how other governments approach age limits on social media. Conversely, evidence that the policy reduces children’s access could strengthen calls for comparable measures elsewhere.
The Senate inquiry is also considering changes that could significantly increase the consequences for platforms that fail to comply. Proposed amendments would raise the maximum penalties to A$99 million and give the eSafety Commissioner broader powers to obtain information and documents from social media companies and third-party providers involved in age verification.
Technology companies have argued that the available data should be interpreted carefully because the policy is still relatively new. Rachel Lord, Google’s head of government relations, pointed out that the government’s most recently published compliance information came from March and may not accurately represent the situation several months later.
“It is a point in time, it’s very early on, and we caution against over-reliance on that,” Lord told the inquiry.
She also highlighted a technical challenge surrounding age assurance. Many existing systems were developed around the age of 18, which is widely used as the legal threshold separating childhood from adulthood. Identifying whether someone is 15 or 16 presents a different and potentially more difficult technological problem.
“the technologies that we are using to detect users at the 16 age boundary are evolving”, Lord added.
The distinction between someone accessing a social media platform and actually holding an account has also become an important part of the debate. Meta’s Australia head of public policy, Mia Garlick, questioned whether survey-based research could accurately establish how many underage children actually maintained accounts on particular platforms.
“There can be differences in terms of people accessing versus having an account,” she told the inquiry.
“Sometimes survey data is challenging in terms of stated versus revealed.”
The difference may appear technical, but it has significant implications for judging the success of Australia’s restrictions. A teenager might view content without maintaining an account, access another person’s profile or use a service through alternative means. Consequently, measuring overall social media use does not necessarily provide a precise measurement of whether platforms are complying with the law.
At the same time, the companies have provided their own figures showing that substantial numbers of suspected underage accounts have been removed or restricted. Meta reported that it had deactivated approximately 756,000 Instagram and Facebook accounts in Australia believed to belong to users below the permitted age. That figure represented an increase from roughly 500,000 accounts identified in March.
Google has also taken action against hundreds of thousands of accounts. Lord told lawmakers that the company had prevented approximately 740,000 Google account holders from using their accounts to access YouTube under the restrictions. These figures demonstrate the scale of the enforcement challenge facing technology companies operating services with millions of users.
TikTok has reported a similarly substantial enforcement effort. Jessica Loftstedt, the company’s Australian head of public policy, described compliance as an ongoing process rather than something that could be completed immediately. TikTok said it had removed approximately 550,000 accounts when the law initially came into effect and has continued removing around 24,000 accounts each month.
The numbers offer two competing interpretations of Australia’s experiment. On one hand, the large volume of account removals suggests that age restrictions are identifying significant numbers of users who may otherwise have continued using the platforms. On the other hand, the continued discovery of suspected underage accounts raises questions about whether children can still bypass age checks or recreate accounts after their original profiles are removed.
That challenge is not unique to Australia. Age assurance has become one of the most complicated issues in online regulation because platforms must balance child protection with privacy, accuracy and practicality. Systems that rely heavily on personal information can create privacy concerns, while automated methods may produce incorrect results. Facial age estimation, identity checks and other verification techniques can also struggle when users are close to the legal age threshold.
