Australia's Under-16 Social Media Ban Is Faltering. Canberra's Fix Is Bigger Fines.

When Australia switched on the world's first national social-media ban for under-16s last December, it billed the measure as a generational reset. Six months on, the government has been forced to concede that the law is being routinely circumvented — and has responded not by softening it, but by sharpening the financial stick aimed at the platforms.

Communications Minister Anika Wells on Saturday unveiled draft legislation that would double the maximum penalty for systemic breaches, from A$49.5mn to A$99mn (about US$65mn), and hand the country's online-safety regulator far broader powers to demand evidence from technology companies, age-checking firms and app stores.

"Social media platforms are some of the richest and most powerful companies in the world, and we're serious about holding them to account," Wells said.

A ban that mostly moved online

The numbers the government cites cut both ways. Since the prohibition took effect on 10 December 2025, platforms have deactivated or restricted more than five million accounts belonging to Australians under 16. But a peer-reviewed evaluation published in the British Medical Journal found "insufficient evidence" that the ban had meaningfully reduced how much young people use social media, and documented "substantial circumvention" of the rules.

Roughly 85 percent of 12- to 15-year-olds were still on social platforms three months after the cut-off, the study found. Two-thirds of under-age users simply declared themselves to be over 16, or presented a selfie that the platforms' age-estimation software waved through. Others borrowed accounts registered to adults, set up fake profiles or logged in through private browser windows.

Australia's regime leans on a mix of artificial-intelligence age estimation and optional verification with government identity documents — precisely the tools the researchers found to be porous.

The regulator gets teeth

Under the new bill, the eSafety Commissioner would be able to compel platforms, age-assurance providers and app-store operators to produce internal documents and data showing what they are actually doing to keep children out. The watchdog has already opened compliance investigations into five services — Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese left little doubt about the government's read of the evidence. "It's clear big tech are not doing enough to comply with the law — there are still too many children on social media," he said. Wells was blunter still, accusing the companies of "adopting tricks straight out of the big tech playbook and doing the bare minimum to get by."

The higher penalties still have to pass Parliament, where the under-16 ban itself enjoys rare cross-party support: both the governing Labor party and the Coalition opposition backed the original law. That consensus has insulated the policy from the fierce industry lobbying it provoked, and gives Wells room to escalate rather than retreat as the first enforcement data lands.

Why the rest of the world is watching

Australia is the laboratory for an idea now spreading across democracies: that the state, not parents or platforms, should set a hard floor on the age of social-media users. How convincingly Canberra can enforce its rules will shape the debate far beyond the Pacific.

Europe is moving in the same direction, more slowly and more cautiously. In November the European Parliament backed a non-binding call for a minimum age of 16. France brought in a law in January requiring platforms to turn away new users under 15, and Brussels is urging member states to roll out a common age-verification app by the end of this year. The Australian results — five million accounts gone, yet most teenagers still scrolling — are exactly the cautionary data point that European regulators, Luxembourg among them, will weigh as they decide how hard to push their own version.

For now, the central question Australia has exposed remains unanswered: whether any government can keep determined teenagers off the platforms without an identity check so intrusive that voters would refuse it. Doubling the fines tests one half of that proposition. The other half — proving the technology can reliably tell a 15-year-old from a 16-year-old — is the part no one has yet solved.