Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese has welcomed his country’s social media ban for children younger than 16.
According to the legislation, Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X, YouTube and Twitch face fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($32.9 million) if they fail to take reasonable steps to remove the accounts of Australian children younger than 16.
Albanese told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.,“This is the day when Australian families are taking back power from these big tech companies and they’re asserting the right of kids to be kids and for parents to have greater peace of mind.”
Albanese later told a gathering of reform supporters at his official Sydney residence that the reform will change lives.
“For Australian kids … allowing them to just have their childhood. For Australian parents, enabling them to have greater peace of mind. But also for the global community, who are looking at Australia and saying: well, if Australia can do it, why can’t we?”
Anthony Albanese
The ban will be enforced by Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant. She said that the platforms already had the technology and personal data about their users to enforce the age restriction with precision.
She would send the 10 targeted platforms notices on Thursday demanding information on how the age restriction was being implemented and how many accounts had been closed.
“We will provide information to the public before Christmas on how these age restrictions are being implemented and whether preliminarily we see them working.
“The responses to these notices will form the baseline against which we will measure compliance.”
Julie Inman Grant
Communications Minister Anika Wells said that the age-restricted platforms “may not agree with the law and that’s their right — we don’t expect 100% universal support,” but that all had undertaken to comply with the Australian law.
She said that more than 200,000 TikTok accounts in Australia had already been deactivated by today, Wednesday, December 10, 2025.
Wells also warned young children who had so far evaded detection that they would eventually be caught “because social media platforms have to go back and routinely check under-16 accounts.”
“These social media platforms have so much data on us because we choose to give it to them because we like social media and because you’ve had your older brother scan their face for you today, which has bought you a bit of time, doesn’t mean that these accounts aren’t going to see you talking to other 14-year-olds tonight about the under-16 soccer carnival on weekend, about your upcoming school holidays and what your Year 10 teacher is next year.”
Anika Wells
Albanese Warns Of Difficult Implementation
Albanese said that the implementation would be difficult and “won’t be perfect.”
“This is about, importantly, pushing back against big tech, saying that social media companies have a social responsibility.”
Anthony Albanese
The government has said that requesting all account holders verify their ages would not be a reasonable step, given the platforms already held sufficient personal data of most people to perform that task. The platforms also cannot compel users to provide government-issued identification.
Meanwhile, Australia’s Privacy Commissioner Carly Kind noted that the platforms could potentially ask all account holders across the country to prove they were 16 or older.
Kind stated that the platforms’ age verification options were to ask for copies of identification documents, use a third party to apply age estimation technology to analyze an account holder’s face, or make inferences from data already available such has how long an account has been held.
Kind asserted that there are quite strong privacy protections in the legislation, saying that they require social media platforms to delete any data they collect for the purpose of age assurance under this scheme and to not use it for secondary purposes unless they have individuals’ consent. “And that’s a really strong and important safeguard,” Kind said.
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