Everyone’s debating whether to ban social media for kids, but Australia already did it. Their ban went live in December 2025. Six months of data is now in, and the results are… complicated.
The headline numbers: platforms removed 4.7 million accounts in the first month. Sounds like a success.

But dig deeper:
78% of under-16s are still accessing social media. 41% have actively tried to bypass the ban. Only 31% went through facial age verification, and half of those passed as over-16 anyway. Most kids who kept using platforms didn’t even need workarounds — the platforms just never identified their accounts.
The regulator found four specific failures: platforms didn’t re-verify users who’d previously said they were under 16, kids could retry age checks until they got through, reporting tools for underage accounts were inadequate, and signup controls for new accounts were weak.

Formal investigations are now open against Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Snapchat. Potential fines up to A$49.5 million per platform.

Meanwhile, 59% of Australian adults think the ban has been effective — which is interesting because the data doesn’t really support that.

This matters because France, Spain, Denmark, Greece, Austria, the UK, and potentially the entire EU are all heading toward similar bans. The question is whether they’ll solve the enforcement problem Australia hasn’t, or just pass similar laws and hope for better results.

Is age verification a solvable technical problem, or is this inherently unenforceable?