--- title: "Australia’s Online Safety Chief Says Platforms Are Falling Short on Teen Ban" description: "Half of under-16s who kept accounts said they were never asked their age, and the regulator is investigating five platforms." author: "rews desk" published: 2026-10-25T23:00:00Z modified: 2026-10-26T01:10:09Z url: https://rews.cc/a/australia-s-online-safety-chief-says-platforms-are-falling-s-b2f7e3 language: en tags: ["social-media", "regulation", "australia", "law", "privacy", "asia"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # Australia’s Online Safety Chief Says Platforms Are Falling Short on Teen Ban *Half of under-16s who kept accounts said they were never asked their age, and the regulator is investigating five platforms.* By rews desk · October 25, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/australia-s-online-safety-chief-says-platforms-are-falling-s-b2f7e3 ## In brief - Australia’s eSafety commissioner told CBS’s 60 Minutes that platforms are not fully complying with the under-16 social media ban - Half of under-16s who still had accounts after three months said they were never asked to confirm their age - The regulator is investigating Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube and is weighing enforcement action - Accounts held by 10- to 15-year-olds fell by around 20% in the ban’s first three months - The High Court is due to hear challenges from two teenagers and Reddit at a two-day hearing in November Julie Inman Grant, Australia’s eSafety commissioner, said tech companies were not complying as fully as she had hoped with the country’s ban on social media accounts for children under 16, in an interview [broadcast on Sunday by CBS’s *60 Minutes*](https://cbsnews.com/news/challenges-enforcing-australia-social-media-ban-60-minutes/). The law took effect on Dec. 10, 2025. Her office is now investigating Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube, and three months into the ban, 50 percent of children under 16 who still had accounts said no platform had asked them to confirm their age, according to the commission. “We know they have the technology to do that, because I met with their engineers and product people in September of last year to find out what their capabilities were,” Ms. Inman Grant said. Ms. Inman Grant, who worked at Microsoft and Twitter before she became a regulator, said she believed some platforms were holding back because they wanted the law to fail. “They were lobbying capitals all over the world to say that it was never going to work,” she said. “They spent more time trying to convince other governments not to follow suit than they did to try and comply and implement the technologies in the right way.” The investigations grew out of the regulator’s [first compliance report, released March 31](https://www.esafety.gov.au/newsroom/media-releases/five-social-media-platforms-flagged-for-compliance-issues), which said a large share of children under 16 were keeping accounts, opening new ones or getting past age checks. Among the problems it listed were platforms that let children try the same age check again and again until it returned a 16-plus result. On Oct. 22, [Bloomberg reported](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-22/australia-watchdog-says-weighing-action-in-social-media-probe) that the watchdog was still weighing its next steps. Companies that lose a case could face civil penalties of around $70 million each, according to *60 Minutes*. The law as written caps fines at 49.5 million Australian dollars, and the government has proposed a bill that would [double that to 99 million](https://www.pinsentmasons.com/out-law/news/australian-government-enforcement-social-media-age-restrictions) for systematic breaches. “Sometimes it isn’t the regulation or the fines that motivate them. It’s their reputation,” Ms. Inman Grant said. “They don’t want to be seen as the company that’s deliberately hurting kids.” The ban has had some effect. In its first three months, the number of 10- to 15-year-olds with at least one account on an age-restricted platform fell by around 20 percent, according to the commission’s research. For *60 Minutes*, Noah Jones, a teenager who was 15 when the ban began, showed how one app [scanned his face](https://rews.cc/a/governments-are-starting-to-notice-the-camera-on-your-face-453c99) with artificial intelligence and judged him old enough to keep his account. On other apps he simply lied about his age. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, told the program it was complying with the law but said “blanket social media bans are ineffective because they push teens to unregulated corners of the internet.” Snap said it took the law seriously and rejected claims that Snapchat was built to addict children. TikTok said its platform was “built with safety at its core.” In the United States, Meta and YouTube were found liable this year in a [social media addiction trial](https://rews.cc/a/democrats-and-republicans-target-big-tech-over-children-s-me-b3a52e) for products that led to harmful and addictive behavior by young users. Both companies have appealed. The national ban started in South Australia, where Premier Peter Malinauskas announced restrictions two years ago at the urging of his wife, Annabel West. The federal government followed with support from both major parties. Mr. Malinauskas said he knew children would get around the rules, “but they’re doing it less than what they otherwise would if you didn’t have a community standard in place.” “If they know what breakfast cereal I’m eating, if they know what my regular run in the morning looks like, I’m pretty sure they can work out who’s 13 and who’s 16 pretty easily,” he said of the companies. Wayne Holdsworth has spoken at more than 100 Australian schools since his teenage son, Mac, was tricked in 2022 into sharing an intimate photo with a man in his 40s who posed as a teenager. The man sent the photo to Mac’s friends and family when he didn’t pay. Mac took his own life the next year. “And finally, Australia, first country in the world, introduced legislation to prevent those tech giants damaging our children,” Mr. Holdsworth said. Ms. Inman Grant said other countries were watching. A British law is expected to take effect next year, and Norway, Spain and Canada are drafting their own. Mr. Jones has a message for them: don’t. “Social media is the modern town square,” he said. He and another teenager, Macy Neyland, are the named plaintiffs in a challenge backed by the Digital Freedom Project, which argues that the law burdens the implied constitutional freedom of political communication. The [High Court](https://www.hcourt.gov.au/cases-and-judgments/cases/current/case-no-s1632025) will hear it together with a separate challenge from Reddit, at a two-day hearing [listed for its November sittings](https://www.addleshawgoddard.com/en/insights/insights-briefings/2026/dispute-resolution/ban-there-done-that-social-media-ban-australia-offers-preview-future-uk-litigation/).