With one month to go until perhaps the biggest social media exodus in history, Australia is getting ready to freeze 2.8 million young people out of their accounts, as part of a social media ban for under-16s.

Around one in eight of Australia’s social media users are aged under 16, despite existing rules prohibiting under-13s from having an account. The sheer scale of closures is expected to dwarf previous daily records, such as the estimated 115,000 who left X on November 6th 2024, in protest at US President Donald Trump’s re-election the day before.

With the deadline looming, some of the biggest social networks, including TikTok, Meta and Snapchat, have confirmed plans to comply with the government’s rules, an extension of the Online Safety Act. In the last few days, the eSafety Commissioner has confirmed that messaging board Reddit and live-streaming platform Kick will also need to introduce age-gating by the deadline.

The Australian regulator is calling on platforms to demonstrate they can root out underage accounts and prevent young people from creating new ones using highly effective age assurance technology, or risk being fined up to 49.5 million Australian dollars.

Among the age check methods recommended by the Australian government are age inference solutions, which draw probabilistic conclusions to imply a likely age. This includes methods like email-based checks, invented by UK-based online safety technology provider Verifymy. This approach analyses the existing digital footprint of an email address to infer the user’s age quickly. Unlike ID checks, this low-friction method does not access personal data, instead determining likely age by checking where the email address has previously been used.

Andy Lulham, COO at online safety provider Verifymy, commented: “We’re a month away from the world’s biggest social media shockwave, impacting the lives of 2.8 million young Australians. It will be a sea change for kids, parents and platforms. For under-16s, who will have to go cold turkey, their accounts will likely be frozen, and contents archived until they become of age. Parents will need to steer them away from their favourite apps and find alternative ways they can stay connected with friends, be that through gaming or even AI. For social media platforms, technology will be key to identify underage users and ensure these new rules are implemented quickly and consistently.

“Reassuringly, the government has acknowledged there is no one-size-fits-all solution for this safeguarding, opening the door to low-friction methods like email-based age checks. We’ve seen in other countries that online age checks can draw a line in the sand, protecting children from accessing adult material. They can be just as effective for under-16s as they are for under-18s, without making logging on too taxing for older users,” added Lulham.

This social media ban is being watched by policymakers across the globe as a potential blueprint to create safer online experiences for children. In New Zealand, ministers are weighing up a similar law that could be introduced as early as 2026, while in the European Union, the 27 member states are aiming to agree a social media age threshold across the bloc.

Beyond the social media ban, more changes to the Online Safety Act are set to be rolled out over the coming months. In September, the eSafety Commissioner also announced new online safety codes designed to reduce children’s exposure to harmful and age-inappropriate material. This includes content like legal pornography, depictions of crime and violence, references to drug use and material promoting suicide or self-harm.

The next stage will come on December 27th, a deadline for search engines operating in Australia to conduct age checks on their users to prove they are 18+ when they sign in. This is designed to shield children from exposure to adult content, which will be filtered out for young users and those not logged in.

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Categories: Articles, Policy, Regulation, Social Media

Tags: australia, social media