Since 10 December 2025, anyone under 16 in Australia has not been able to create or maintain accounts on social media apps like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
Social media companies are responsible for enforcing this law and can face serious fines (up to $50 million) if they do not have sufficient safeguards in place.
While it’s been barely a month since the law took effect, opinion is divided on the effectiveness of the ban.
To some, Australia’s law reflects an authoritarian move by the government, whereas others herald it as a necessary step for protecting young people from the dangers of social media.
Meta removed access to almost 550,000 accounts belonging to under-16s, but it’s unclear whether these users shifted to unregulated sites like 4chan or turned to ChatGPT for digital interaction.
While we will have to wait for potentially years to see the long-term effects of the ban, other countries are already considering following Australia’s lead.
Why I deleted every social app — and what I replaced them with
I deleted every social app and my phone finally feels alive again
Australia has sparked a worldwide movement
British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is reportedly in favor of rolling out an Australia-style social media ban in the UK.
Denmark is preparing legislation to ban access to some social media sites for those under the age of 15; the government has secured agreement from all political parties to implement the measure.
In Spain, a bill suggests that children under 16 should not be able to access any virtual space that incorporates generative artificial intelligence.
These three countries are just the tip of the iceberg. Many more European countries are considering social media bans.
While details of social media legislation vary between nations, they are all aimed at improving the well-being and online safety of children.
These efforts aren’t limited to Europe and Australia either.
Malaysia’s government and India’s high court judges have suggested their respective countries should copy Australia’s law, indicating a remarkable worldwide effort to secure the online safety of children.
In the US, support for a social media ban exists, but the idea has far less traction than in Europe.
Likely due to lobbying efforts from the US-based tech companies that dominate the social media landscape, lawmakers have been unable to pass proposals to restrict young people’s access.
Individual states have taken up the slack, but these fragmentary efforts are struggling before they can take effect.
Virginia is scheduled to impose a one-hour daily limit on social media for children under 16 unless parents opt out, but this law is reportedly already facing legal challenges.
At the very least, we could see a widespread rollout of advanced age verification techniques
Australia’s law requires social media apps and websites to take “reasonable steps” to verify their users’ ages.
This means that underage users can bypass restrictions by circumventing age checks or through simple workarounds like using a VPN.
While tech companies are required to remove accounts in violation of the policy (as we saw with Meta’s mass removal of underage accounts), it doesn’t take much to fool some of the checks.
Nevertheless, if more countries implement an Australia-style social media ban, tech companies will face greater and greater fines for violating the policy.
As they develop new ways of verifying their users’ ages, we could see a rise not only in new age-verification measures but also in legislation that determines how companies can verify age.
One of the biggest problems for tech companies enforcing the legislation is that they have limited resources to stop users from circumventing the age restrictions.
Resolving this issue by handing these companies more control over their users’ data feels like a significant step backward in the fight for user privacy.
Meta has been unsurprisingly critical of Australia’s law, but one of its alternative proposals carries real weight.
Verifying age at the source could lead to a more consistent implementation of social media laws
In a Medium blog post, Meta proposed that legislation should require app stores to bear the responsibility of verifying a user’s age.
This makes sense, as a stronger verification system at the source would cover all social media apps hosted on an app store.
There would still be workarounds to this (such as installing APKs on Android phones), but it’s a reasonable suggestion regardless.
As legislation passes in more countries and Australia handles the impact of its law, we will likely see a shift in how we interact with social media apps and app stores in the coming years.
While underage users will see the biggest impact, legislation will affect everyone.
While parents and children should be the most concerned about a social media ban, the effects aren’t limited to them.
Adult users may see stronger verification checks, increased public communication, and compensatory measures by social media platforms.
In countries where a social media ban is non-existent or failing to gain traction, like in the US, users of these apps should still take note.
A global pushback against the negative impact of social media apps is well underway, and it doesn’t show signs of dying down anytime soon.
