Meta says it has blocked more than 544,000 accounts under Australia’s new ban on social media accounts for under-16s, while urging the government to rethink what it calls a “blanket” approach. Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has defended the rollout, acknowledging some teens were still posting online a day after the ban went live and calling the early days “bumpy.”
Australia’s law requires major platforms to stop underage users from holding accounts, with companies facing fines of up to A$49.5 million if they fail to take “reasonable steps” to comply. Meta said it removed 331,000 underage accounts from Instagram, 173,000 from Facebook, and 40,000 from Threads in the week to December 11.
Meta pushes app-store checks
Meta said it is committed to complying with the law but called on the Australian government to engage with industry “constructively” on alternatives to blanket bans.
The company renewed its call for app stores to be required to verify ages and obtain parental approval before under-16s can download an app.
Meta argued this app-store approach is the only way to avoid a “whack-a-mole” situation where teens move to new apps to get around restrictions. It also said there is a lack of an industry standard for determining age online and described compliance as a “multilayered process.”
Government says platforms must act
A government spokesperson said Australia is holding social media companies to account for harm to young Australians.
The spokesperson also said platforms like Meta collect large amounts of user data for commercial purposes and “can and must” use that information to ensure people under 16 are not on their platforms.
Communications Minister Anika Wells said the eSafety Commissioner would ask affected platforms to report the number of under-16 accounts in the days before and after the ban took effect on December 10.
The law covers 10 major platforms, including TikTok, Meta’s Instagram, and Alphabet’s YouTube, according to the report.
Teens test the rollout
Albanese said social media feeds were flooded with comments from people claiming to be under 16 a day after the ban went live.
He said those bragging posts could effectively identify underage users and would be taken down, adding, “This is the law, this isn’t something that can be flouted.”
The government has previously said it would take time for platforms to set up the processes needed to bar underage users. Albanese said the rollout was always going to be bumpy but would ultimately save lives.
Workarounds and wider debate
The report said Australian searches for virtual private networks (VPNs) surged to the highest level in about 10 years in the week before the ban took effect, based on publicly available Google data.
Free VPN provider Windscribe told Reuters it saw a 400% increase in installations in Australia in the 24 hours after the ban went live, while hide.me said it saw a 65% spike in visits from Australia in the days before the ban, though not a rise in downloads.
Meta repeated its opposition to the law, saying some experts, advocates, and parent groups were concerned it could push teenagers to less regulated parts of the internet and that there was “little interest in compliance,” which Meta said could lead to inconsistent enforcement and not make young people safer.
Separately, Meta said parents and experts were worried the ban could isolate young people from online communities and drive some to less regulated apps and “darker corners” of the internet, and it claimed early impacts suggested the law was not meeting its objectives for young Australians’ safety and well-being.
The United Nations children’s agency UNICEF warned that age restrictions could encourage children to visit less regulated parts of the internet and said such measures could not work alone, adding that age-restriction laws are not a substitute for companies improving platform design and content moderation.
The ban has also drawn international attention, with other governments monitoring the rollout, and the report noted US Republican senator Josh Hawley endorsed the ban as it took effect while France, Denmark, Malaysia, and others have said they plan to emulate Australia’s model.
As the ban took effect, some platforms not covered by the ban rose in app download charts, and the Australian government said the platform list was “dynamic.”
The report also said Lemon8 introduced a minimum age of 16, and photo-sharing app Yope told Reuters it had grown quickly to about 100,000 Australian users, with about half over 16, while saying it had told the regulator it considered itself a private messaging service rather than a social media platform.
Meta also said it helped found the OpenAge Initiative, describing it as a non-profit group that launched age-verification tools called AgeKeys for use with participating platforms.
