Ten months into Australia's teen social media ban

The day before the ban began, Riley Allen was worried about the summer holidays. The 15-year-old lives on a sheep farm in the Outback of South Australia, where friends live far apart. "I'm not sure how we're going to keep in touch over the holidays with each other," he told the Associated Press.³ His mother, Sonia, a schoolteacher, had doubts: "But I know what kids are like, and I've been a kid before, and they're going to get around it if they can."³

The next day, December 10, 2025, Australia began requiring major social media platforms to keep out users under 16. Parliament had passed the law on November 29, 2024.¹ It covers ten platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Reddit, and companies that fail to take reasonable steps to remove young users face fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars.² "This is the day when Australian families are taking back power from these big tech companies," said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.²

Ten months later, her doubt sits at the center of the debate. Has the ban kept teens off social media, or taught them to get around it?

Millions of accounts, and many workarounds

The first numbers were dramatic. In January 2026, the eSafety Commissioner reported that platforms had restricted access to 4.7 million accounts belonging to under-16s.⁴ Commissioner Julie Inman Grant compared the law to road rules: "Speed limits for instance are not a failure because some people speed."⁴

By March, the picture was messier. The regulator's first compliance report found many children still had accounts, had opened new ones or had passed age checks. It named five platforms it was investigating, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube, and criticized practices such as allowing unlimited attempts at an age check.⁶ Communications Minister Anika Wells said, "Social media platforms are choosing to do the absolute bare minimum because they want these laws to fail."⁶ Meta replied that "accurately determining age online is a challenge for the whole industry."⁶

In June, the government announced it would double the maximum fine to 99 million dollars and give the regulator new powers to demand evidence from platforms, and from age-check and app-store companies.⁹

What the first study found

In July, eSafety published early results from a two-year study of more than 4,000 children and families, prepared with a global panel of university researchers.⁷⁸ Three months after the ban began, the share of under-16s with a social media account had fallen from 52.4 percent to 42.1 percent. But the share using social media at all, with or without an account, had only dropped from 85.9 percent to 81.5 percent.⁷ In some groups, especially girls and children aged 10 to 12, parents now knew less about what their children were doing online.⁷

The surveys found no change yet in teenagers' sleep or mental health.¹⁰ eSafety itself warned that "it is too early to meaningfully assess whether the policy's intended outcomes have been achieved."⁷ Jeff Hancock, founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab, urged patience: "This is not like you wave a wand, and all of a sudden, kids are out on the footy fields."¹⁰

Supporters, critics and the courts

Supporters say a rule for everyone takes the pressure off any single child. A parents' group, the Heaps Up Alliance, puts it this way: "when everybody misses out, nobody misses out."³ Before the vote, more than 140 Australian and international academics signed an open letter calling an age limit "too blunt an instrument to address risks effectively."³

Noah Jones, a 15-year-old from Sydney, joined a High Court challenge brought by a rights group, the Digital Freedom Project. "We've just grown up with this our entire lives, and now it's just being taken away from us all of a sudden," he said.³ Reddit filed its own challenge, arguing that the law breaks the freedom of political communication protected by Australia's Constitution, while promising to keep complying.⁵ Some researchers would rather fix the platforms. "In the absence of transparency, we end up with really, really terrible policymaking," said Daniel Angus of Queensland University of Technology.¹⁰

France's lower house passed a bill in January 2026 to ban social media for under-15s. Denmark, Spain, Malaysia, Indonesia and Greece have announced or proposed limits, and the United Kingdom is considering one.¹¹ As Hancock put it, "It's really changed the worldwide conversation."¹⁰

Questions to think about

If eight in ten children still use social media, is the ban failing, or is it too early to judge? Who should be responsible for checking a user's age: platforms, app stores, parents or teenagers themselves? And if some teens now hide their use from parents, are they safer or less safe?

For the main arguments on both sides, see the pro and con guide below.