Millions of children and teenagers in Australia will immediately lose access to their accounts after the country became the first in the world to enact a law banning social media for users under 16.
The underage ban came into effect on Wednesday, following the Australian parliament’s passage of the law in 2024 as part of a broader update to the Online Safety Act 2021, which blocks users under 16 from accessing major social media platforms.
Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, YouTube, Snapchat, Reddit, Kick, Twitch, and TikTok confirmed on Tuesday that they would comply with the ban and are expected to have started deregistering accounts held by children and teenagers while blocking users from opening new ones.
However, X has yet to confirm if it would comply with the new law.
The eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, said it had recently spoken with X about how it would comply, but the company had not communicated its policy to users.
Platforms that do not comply risk fines of up to $49.5 million.
Meanwhile, some technical issues have been reported about under-16 users passing facial recognition age assurance tests, but the Australian government has been flagged, and it was not expecting the process to be perfect from the start.
This latest policy is expected to be closely monitored by parents around the world as more countries consider ways to protect young social media users from exposure to harmful content online.
