The Effects Of Australia's Social Media Law

Australia's new social media law took effect last 10 December 2025, raising the age to open or maintain social media accounts to 16. It was a global first. The law called for the biggest social media platforms to do more than just ask for a birthdate. Now, they would be legally required to take responsibility for verifying and enforcing an age minimum.

Half a year on, the world is watching closely. Are the restrictions working?

Some critics and media outlets have prematurely concluded that the policy has failed. They point to early surveys showing that under-16 social media use has fallen only partially, and that most kids are still accessing social media. And they argue that age limits will never work, that these laws miss the real problem of harmful platform design, and that the countries considering following Australia—of which there are many—should reconsider.

The truth is far more encouraging. There are several promising trends that other countries are now building upon, reflecting the importance of Australia's pioneering policies.

It started with a relatively smooth rollout. All 10 platforms took steps to verify users' ages and remove accounts of those under 16. Now, fewer kids in the land down under are using social media, and more than a dozen other countries, including Indonesia, Canada, Malaysia, the UAE, France, Spain, and the U.K., are beginning their own journeys to rein in social media.

The world is, and should, follow Oz's lead.

When Australia's law went into effect last December, 10 social media platforms—Facebook, Kick, Reddit, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, Instagram, Snapchat, X, and YouTube—removed 4.7 million under-16 accounts belonging to an estimated 2.5 million Aussies between the ages of eight and 15.

To be sure, that does not mean that these kids can't access social media altogether, since many likely have several accounts across platforms. But it shows that the law made immediate progress and compelled platforms to take action on a massive scale.

Still, some have said that this decline is too modest, suggested that kids could also be finding workarounds, and concluded that therefore, the law is failing. So let's look more closely at the numbers.

Several early studies indicate that social media use and account ownership among Australian children under 16 declined between 9 percent and 40 percent. To understand this wide variation between studies, it's important to know what Australia's social media age minimum actually does.

The law prevents those under the age of 16 from creating or keeping accounts on covered platforms by limiting the age at which minors can sign the contract required to open an account and consent to share their data via a terms of service.

Some studies examine account ownership, others measure actual usage, and still others focus on either individual platforms or multiple platforms combined, leading to substantial variation in the results of different studies.

The law does not eliminate children's access to social media content. That is because it was never designed to. Account-based access—and the data the user agrees to share with the platform upon sign-up—is the vehicle for many of the worst social media harms that children experience, such as late-night notifications, interactions with anonymous strangers, posting one's images online, "like" counts, and algorithmic recommendations designed to maximally "engage" or addict that particular child.

For this reason, studies that measure whether a kid has access to any platform, whether an underage user is using an account or not, will greatly underestimate the law's effects.

So social media use among Australian kids has declined somewhat. And while disappointment about the rate and speed of decline is understandable, it ultimately misunderstands how the law was crafted.