Australia’s Social Media Ban Spreads Globally Despite Low Early Impact

Key Takeaways

• Australia’s under-16 ban took effect on 10 December 2025, the world’s first
• Penalties reach A$49.5 million and there is no parental consent exemption
• Nearly a third of Australian parents said their under-16 still had an account
• Two-thirds of those said the platform never asked the child’s age
• At least a dozen countries are pursuing minimum-age laws between 13 and 16
• Turkey passed an under-15 ban in April; Greece’s begins January 2027
• The EU’s Digital Fairness Act targets addictive design rather than age alone
• A Los Angeles jury ordered Meta and YouTube to pay $6 million over addictive design
• Age verification remains the central unsolved problem

Eight months after the world’s first under-16 ban took effect, nearly a third of Australian parents said their child still had an account and two-thirds of those said the platform never asked the child’s age.

Summary

Australia became the first country to ban social media for under-16s when its law took effect on 10 December 2025. At least a dozen countries are now pursuing minimum-age laws between 13 and 16, and the European Commission is preparing a Digital Fairness Act. But Australia’s first comprehensive compliance report found nearly one-third of parents said their under-16 child still held at least one account.

Where This Started

Australia passed the law in November 2024 and switched it on 10 December 2025.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s framing when announcing it: “Social media is doing harm to our kids and I’m calling time on it.”

The absence of a parental consent exemption is what makes it the strictest version. France’s earlier proposal allowed parents to opt their children in; Australia’s does not.

The Compliance Data Nobody Quotes

Australia’s first comprehensive compliance report, published in early April 2026, found the ban was being widely circumvented.

• Nearly one-third of parents reported their under-16 child still had at least one social media account
• Among those, two-thirds said the platform had never asked the child’s age

That second figure is the more damaging one. It suggests the failure is not primarily children lying about their age it is that age was frequently not checked at all.

Angela Flannery, a former general counsel at Australia’s Communications Department, described the report as “disheartening” and noted the government’s response: “They probably want to be seen to be taking action to keep encouraging other jurisdictions to enforce or to enact similar bans.”

That is a striking observation. It implies enforcement is being driven partly by Australia’s role as the international test case.

Meta and Snap said they were committed to complying. TikTok declined to comment. Alphabet did not respond.

Who Is Following, and How

At least a dozen countries are pursuing minimum-age laws between 13 and 16.

Portugal’s approach is distinctive: fines of up to 2% of global revenue rather than a fixed cap.

Spain, Denmark and Slovenia are also pursuing minimum-age laws. Pakistan and India are focused on parental consent and age verification rather than outright bans. India’s chief economic adviser called in January for age restrictions, describing platforms as “predatory” in how they keep users engaged two days after the state of Goa said it was studying Australia-style limits.

The European Approach Is Different

The EU is targeting design rather than age alone.

The Digital Fairness Act, due to be proposed towards the end of 2026, is aimed at “addictive and harmful design practices.” A European age-verification app is reportedly ready for deployment, allowing users to prove their age anonymously.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has framed it more sharply than most:

“The question is not whether young people should have access to social media. The question is whether social media should have access to young people. Let us give childhood back to children.”

She has separately described “algorithms that prey on children’s vulnerabilities,” leaving parents powerless against “the tsunami of big tech flooding their homes.”

The European Parliament called for an under-16 ban in November.

The UK is consulting on both a potential under-16 ban alongside restrictions on specific addictive features including infinite scrolling, autoplay and push notifications. That consultation closed on 26 May.

That distinction matters. An age ban asks who may use a product. A design regulation asks how the product may work for everyone.

The Courts Are Moving Too

In the United States, legislation has stalled while litigation has advanced.

A Los Angeles jury ordered Meta and YouTube to pay $6 million in a landmark social media addiction trial, including punitive damages, after finding “malice, oppression, or fraud” specifically targeting the intentional use of addictive design features.

The dollar figure is small. The finding is not. A jury concluding that addictive design was deliberate creates a template other plaintiffs can follow.

On the legislative side, the Kids Online Safety Act gained ground when Republican Senator Ted Cruz said on 12 May he would back it. The bill would require platforms to exercise “reasonable care” in designing features that contribute to harm to minors.

State-level efforts continue but face persistent legal challenges, largely on First Amendment grounds.

The Case Against Bans

This deserves proper space, because the policy is not uncontested.

Enforcement. Australia’s own data is the strongest argument here. If a third of children retain accounts eight months in, the law changes rhetoric more than reality.

Age verification creates its own risks. Verifying age at scale means collecting identity data on everyone, not just children. The EU’s anonymous verification app is an attempt to solve this; whether it works is unproven.

Displacement. Children removed from mainstream platforms do not stop being online. They move to smaller, less moderated services with fewer safety teams and less regulatory attention.

The evidence base is contested. The link between social media use and adolescent mental health is real but disputed in magnitude and direction, and researchers disagree on how much is causal.

Blunt instruments. A 15-year-old using Instagram to follow a football club and one being served self-harm content are treated identically by an age ban. Design regulation targets the second without the first.

The counter-argument, which governments are making: none of these objections is a reason to do nothing, and platforms had a decade to self-regulate before legislators intervened.

Timeline

Expert Analysis

The global spread and the enforcement gap are the same story, and most coverage tells only half of it.

Australia demonstrated something genuinely important: that a democratic government can legislate against the largest technology companies on child safety grounds and survive the pressure. That is why a dozen countries followed within a year.

What Australia has not yet demonstrated is that it works. Nearly a third of parents reporting their child still holds an account, with two-thirds saying age was never checked, describes a law that platforms are not yet implementing effectively.

The distinction between the two policy models is the thing to watch. Age bans regulate who; design regulation regulates how. The EU’s Digital Fairness Act and the UK’s consultation on autoplay and infinite scroll are attempts at the second, and they are harder to circumvent a child cannot lie their way past a platform that does not have autoplay.

The Los Angeles verdict may prove more consequential than any statute. A jury finding that addictive design was intentional, amounting to “malice, oppression, or fraud,” gives plaintiffs a route that does not require legislation and cannot be lobbied away.

The honest summary: the political argument is over and the enforcement argument has barely started. Whether any of this changes what children actually experience online depends on age verification working and Australia’s first report says it currently does not.

Conclusion

In under two years, banning social media for children went from an Australian experiment to a policy at least a dozen governments are pursuing. The political argument is effectively settled.

What has not been settled is whether it changes anything. Australia’s own compliance report a third of parents saying their child still has an account, most of them saying age was never checked is the most important document in this debate, and the least cited.

The countries watching Australia are copying the law. The harder question is whether they will copy the enforcement, and whether age verification can be made to work at all.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which country banned social media for children first?

Australia. Its law passed in November 2024 and took effect on 10 December 2025, requiring platforms including TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook to block users under 16, with no parental consent exemption.

Is Australia’s ban working?

Not fully. The first comprehensive compliance report found nearly one-third of parents said their under-16 child still had at least one account, and two-thirds of those said the platform had never asked the child’s age.

Which other countries are banning social media for minors?

Turkey passed an under-15 ban in April 2026 and Greece’s takes effect in January 2027. France, Malaysia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, New Zealand, Spain, Denmark and Slovenia are all advancing measures.

What is the EU doing?

The European Commission is preparing a Digital Fairness Act targeting addictive and harmful design practices, expected towards the end of 2026. A European age-verification app allowing anonymous age proof is reportedly ready for deployment.

What are the penalties for platforms?

Australia’s maximum is A$49.5 million. Portugal took a different approach, allowing fines of up to 2% of global revenue for companies breaching its parental consent rules for 13 to 16-year-olds.

What happened in the US court case?

A Los Angeles jury ordered Meta and YouTube to pay $6 million in a social media addiction trial, including punitive damages, after finding malice, oppression or fraud relating to the intentional use of addictive design features.

What are the arguments against these bans?

Enforcement difficulty, the privacy risks of mass age verification, displacement of children to less moderated platforms, contested evidence on harm, and the bluntness of treating all use identically regardless of content.

What is the difference between age bans and design regulation?

An age ban restricts who may use a platform. Design regulation restricts how platforms may work targeting features such as infinite scroll, autoplay and push notifications for all users rather than excluding a group.