Meta has shared an update on its efforts to align with Australia’s new teen social media ban, which puts the onus on social platforms to keep all teens under the age of 16 off their platforms, or face significant financial penalties.
The new law went into effect on December 10th, and thus far, Meta says that it’s removed access to almost 550k accounts that it believes belong to underage users.
That’s a lot of profiles that have seemingly lost access to Facebook, Instagram and Threads, though Facebook and Threads are probably less of a concern to most teen users.
Instagram, however, is a key connector, with many youngsters logging onto IG for connection and entertainment. For context, Snapchat reported that it had around 440k users aged under 16 before the law was enacted.
The impacts there could be significant, but I can say, as a parent of two teens impacted by this change, that very few young users seem overly concerned, and don’t appear to have changed their usage habits significantly since December 10th.
That’s because they can use VPNs and other connection options to get around the rules, while many use Instagram in logged-out form, which still enables them to scroll through Reels, with some algorithmic refinement. It’s a little more limited, but there’s been minimal change in behavior that I’ve seen or heard about, despite these reported numbers.
Australia’s social media law, which is the first significant restriction of social media access based on age in a Western nation, aims to better protect kids from harmful exposure online, by ensuring that young teens are not being shown adult content, or being negatively influenced by social platform algorithms.
But again, as I’ve noted previously, it’s a flawed approach, that’s easily subverted, while the assumptions of the law also don’t match up to the research, nor the potential for adverse risk by pushing teens to other, less safe spaces of the web.
One of the key flaws, at least from a legal perspective, is that Australian authorities haven’t mandated a means to check user ages, in order to keep young teens out of their apps. Instead, the Australian law puts the onus on the platforms themselves to “take reasonable steps” to restrict teens under the age of 16 from accessing their apps.
“Reasonable steps” is a fairly vague qualifier, especially when you’re threatening penalties of $50 million for violations, and if it comes down to a legal argument, it’s going to be difficult for a court to definitively rule on “reasonable steps,” especially when you consider what, say, Elon Musk might consider “reasonable” versus anybody else.
On this front, Meta says that it’s looking to implement AgeKeys from OpenAge, which will enable users to set up a verified age key, that’s then stored on their device, and enables them to share “verified age signals” with participating platforms in a privacy-preserving manner.
“Users can verify their AgeKey in multiple ways, such as with a government-issued ID, financial information, face estimation, or national digital wallets. Meta will begin to integrate this tool into its apps in Australia and other markets in 2026.”
That will then provide another barrier for entry, though the true value of such is largely based on broader adoption, and making it as easy as possible for young users to use AgeKeys to prove their age.
Which is why Meta continues to push for legislation around age verification and parental approval at the app store level.
“To ensure all teens are protected online, we believe legislation should require app stores to verify age and obtain parental approval before their teens under 16 can download an app. This is the only way to guarantee consistent, industry-wide protections for young people, no matter which apps they use, and to avoid the whack-a-mole effect of catching up with new apps that teens will migrate to in order to circumvent the social media ban law.”
On this, I agree, with the app stores having much broader oversight, through the download bottleneck, that can help to ensure greater enforcement of the rules.
But it seems like that’s a more difficult case to crack, or that politicians are more keen to make a public stance against social media companies, which are seen as the bad guys among voters.
In any event, Meta is working to implement better age-checking systems, but they’ll remain susceptible, which is important to note as more regions consider similar restrictions.
