Australia's teen social media ban struggling to clear age-check hurdles, says testing firm

Online platforms in commonwealth of australia ar stumbling at the rattling number one tread in implementing age checks for users, rendering the first-of-its-kind social media ban ineffective, according to a team that advised the government's rollout of the new law.

Since December, Australia's new social media law has mandated that platforms including Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube bar people under 16 years from having accounts.

Operators must take "reasonable steps" to comply, and the government has recommended using multiple checks to determine users' age.

The ban and its implementation, however, have been widely criticized, with studies suggesting most people under 16 are still able to access the platforms, prompting Australia to double the maximum fine last month and warn of court action against tech giants for non-compliance.

In the first half of 2025, software analytics and testing firm KJR helped lead a government-commissioned assessment of digital age-assurance technologies. That evaluation, which tested age-assurance software on more than 1,000 Australians, found that age-check technology could indeed be deployed with careful implementation.

Since the law came into force, however, a KJR software team set up 50 new "teen" tester accounts, all claiming to be age 16, and discovered that nine of 10 social platforms did not ask for age proof on any of them, the researchers told Reuters.

The previously unreported finding reveals a largely overlooked flaw: while the process has so far focused on the accuracy of photo-based age-assurance software, the initial vetting stage of most platforms — which guesses a person's age range based on their general online activity — does not appear to be picking up any of the test user accounts for further checks.

"You should be asked to demonstrate how old you are, and not once have we been asked to verify our age or use age-assurance measures," said Andrew Hammond, a general manager at KJR who co-led the 2025 evaluation.

How is Australia settling into age-restricted social media?

All 50 of KJR's test accounts are active and have been distributed among nine of the 10 platforms that are subject to the age restrictions, including Meta's Instagram, Snap's Snapchat, TikTok and Alphabet's YouTube, Hammond said.

Some dummy accounts received advertisements for youth banking products, an indication the platform registered the person's age range, Hammond said. One account which signed up to Elon Musk's X claiming to be 16 was served pornographic content, he added.

None of the platforms let users sign up if they declared they were under 16.

Canada vows to restrict social media for kids under 16. Teens say they'll 'always find a way'

But just one, Australia-based live-streaming platform Kick, refused to let users create an account without proof of age, the follow-up study found.

Snap and TikTok declined to comment, while Google and X, which is owned by SpaceX, did not respond to requests for comment.

A Meta spokesperson said Hammond's shadow trial appeared inconsistent with the regulator's guidance of escalating "to formal age verification when behavioral indicators suggest they may be underage, or when an account is reported."

The spokesperson added that the dummy accounts were declared as over the minimum age and it was unclear if they had "posted content or engaged in a way a true under-16-year-old user would."

A Kick spokesperson said it would not be feasible to rely on age inference as the platform was new and did not have enough data to guess user ages.

A spokesperson for the eSafety commissioner said the regulator "remains confident that age-restricted platforms have the technology and resources they need to prevent Australian children under 16 from having accounts."

The recommended approach of increasingly robust checks "if implemented correctly ensures there is no single point of failure," the spokesperson added.

After an initial claim that Australia's ban had wiped some 4.7 million suspected underage accounts in a month, the rollout has faced near-constant reports of non-compliance. By March, the government warned of potential enforcement lawsuits against five platforms, and last month said it was doubling the maximum fine, accusing the platforms of setting the ban up to fail.

But the platforms have said they are following the regulator's guidance which prioritizes low-friction vetting as a first step. The platforms are prohibited from relying solely on government-issued identification, due to privacy concerns.

More countries are pushing for youth social media bans. Is the world reaching a tipping point?

Since Australia enacted its ban last December, a wave of countries worldwide – from the U.K. To Indonesia, Brazil to France – have introduced their own measures. While many of these efforts also focus on removing youth accounts from platforms, some also specify greater regulation of how social media platforms are designed and target areas to address, like addictive features or strengthening content moderation and reporting. 

In June, Canada introduced Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, which would force social media platforms to restrict accounts for children under 16 years old unless they can demonstrate they've made their platforms safe. The proposed legislation, which must be passed by Parliament before becoming law, also sets safety criteria for AI chatbots and includes plans for a new online safety commission tasked with setting and enforcing regulations and assessing companies for compliance.

Expert warns of privacy concerns, rights violations over social media ban

Some advisers to the earlier age-assurance evaluation said they had warned throughout the process that it was undermined by lack of testing for real-life circumvention, which includes under-16s entering false birthdates.

Canada vows to restrict social media for kids under 16. Teens say they'll 'always find a way'

"We did want to talk about circumvention, but we kept on being told that that wasn't part of the actual trial," said Colm Gannon, Australia CEO of the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children, who advised the project.

"What we are now seeing is that circumvention has become the go-to by young people," he added.

Amanda Third, a youth digital rights academic who advised the trial and is now participating in a two-year regulator study of the ban's impact, said the platforms were always expected to start by targeting accounts that were self-declared as underage before escalating to age inference methods by mid-year.

"The next round of data that's collected after this point, we may be able to see some more impressive statistics," she said.

---

---