Australia can become the first country in the world to prohibit the access of people under 16 years to popular social networks such as Instagram, Tiktok, Snapchat, Facebook and X, by a law that is to enter into force until the end of 2025.
People under 16 will no longer have accounts on social networks in Australia. Source: freepik.com
The law that restricts the use of social networks by persons under 16 will enter into force in December 2025, and the Australian government hopes that, in this way, it will eliminate over one million teenagers on these platforms.
Over one million accounts could be closed
The normative act, adopted at the end of 2024, provides that social media platforms operating in Australia have 12 months to develop and implement systems for applying age restrictions, which should be functional by the end of 2025.
“Until December, the country wants to eliminate over one million young teenagers on social networks, based on an innovative law that establishes the minimum age of 16 for using these platforms. However, less than six months before the new regulation enters, many aspects related to implementation remain unclear or undec.” The New York Times correspondent shows in an article on how the law on children’s restrictions on the Australian continent is implemented.
Australia has long been one of the most proactive countries in the world in terms of Internet regulation. He faced Elon Musk because of violent videos and exploitation of children on X, forced Google and Facebook to pay for news and tried to filter large parts of online, notes the same correspondent.
However, half a year after the adoption of the law, the authorities have not yet established exactly what the social media platforms have to do to comply.
According to new regulations, platforms must take “reasonable steps” to prevent people under 16 years of age to create accounts. Otherwise, they could receive fines of over $ 30 million. The Australian government studied methods of verifying the age of users, but did not publish the complete results of an extended test.
Regulations of using social networks, stricter
The first consultations with the Tech industry and experts started in June 2025, to establish the methods of implementing and verifying the age of the users.
“We could build the plane while we fly with him. I am very confident that we will succeed,” said Julie Inman Grant, the online safety commissioner in charge of applying the law, in a television speech.
The law could have a major impact if Australia will be able to eliminate a significant number of adolescents on social networks.
Several governments in the world and different US states are in the process of imposing, or planning to impose their own rules on the access of young people to social networks, against the background of increased concerns about the effects on mental health and the addictive character of these platforms.
The Australia law was presented as one of the first national initiatives that aims to remove children from social networks.
In May, New Zealand introduced a legislation modeled closely after the Australian, which puts the responsibility of checking the age of users on the shoulders of social media platforms.
In June, the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, announced that he wants to ban children under 15 years of social networks in the coming months, the New York Times journalists show.
And the accounts of the children on YouTube were proposed for deletion
YouTube, the platform that teenagers in Australia use more than any other service, may or may not be covered by law, the publication shows.
In Australia, the authorities initially intended to exclude YouTube from the law.
“The draft law ensures that the legislation remains adapted to the ever -changing nature of technology, while also allowing continuous access to messaging, online games, as well as services and applications mainly for health education or support – such as Headspace, Kids Helpline, Google Classroom and YouTube.”according to the law, according to the Australian government statement.
However, recently, notes journalists, the online safety agency recommended that YouTube not be excluded, showing that it is the most popular platform, used by three quarters of young people between 10 and 15 years old, and that it has functions that can lead to excessive use, such as infinite development and short videos.
“YouTube has been firmly opposed to this recommendation, arguing that it is a video streaming platform, not a social network, and that over four out of five teachers use videos from youtube in class.” The New York Times said.
In an interview, Julie Inman Grant said that his office has recently started consultations with Tech companies to determine what reasonable steps they need to do to comply with the law.
Companies will have to prove that they make sufficient efforts to identify users under the legal age and to delete their accounts.
Also, they will have to provide ways in which parents or teachers can signal the accounts belonging to people under 16, to show that they prevent the rules bypassing and prove that they monitor the efficiency of the implemented methods, said the online safety commissioner in Australia.
Even if not all the accounts that fall under the law will be eliminated immediately, the mere existence of these regulations will lead to changes in the good direction, she said.
“This is one of the biggest problems of our time: the intersection between social networks and the mental health of children”, says Julie Intman Grant.
There will be no penalties for children or parents who violate the restriction, the responsibility to prevent the access of children under 16 years of age returning exclusively to technology companies.
The new law arouses controversy
Some of the officials of the Tech companies involved in the implementation of the law say that, although it has already passed for more than half a year, they are still waiting for the Government to define the unit of measure they will be evaluated.
Meta, in turn, has already invested in the development of technologies to determine the age of users and has created special accounts for teenagers, with additional safety measures, said Joanna Stevens, spokesman for the company that manages Instagram and Facebook.
The critics of the law have shown that it has many weaknesses. For example, they do not address the problem of the content to which children can have access without being authenticated in an account; only specifies that users under the legal age should not be able to have accounts.
Axel Bruns, a communication professor and media at Queensland University of Technology, said that by asking Tech companies to find a way to prevent children from accessing unspecified means, instead of asking them to more effectively mold the harmful content, the government chooses to “hit with the baros.”
“It’s like saying that we want a magical technology, and if you don’t come with it, it’s your fault. It’s, in essence, a law based on desires and hopes.” added Axel Bruns, quoted by The New York Times.
