Australia's Teen Social Media Ban Isn't Working, Study Finds

Australia passed a law saying kids under 16 cannot have accounts on social media apps like Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube. The law started in December 2024 and was meant to be the first of its kind in the world. But a new study says the ban is not working because the apps are not even asking users to prove how old they are.

Researchers from a software testing company called KJR opened 50 fake accounts on nine major platforms. Every account listed its age as 16. Not one platform asked the testers to show any proof of their age. The accounts are still active today, which means anyone could do the same thing to get around the ban.

Andrew Hammond is the director of KJR, and his team ran a big age-checking software trial in 2025. He said that users should always be asked to prove their age when signing up. 'Not once have we been asked to verify our age or use age-assurance measures,' Hammond said. His team found that the first step in the age-checking process — which is supposed to guess a person's age based on their online activity — is simply not catching young users.

Only one platform, a live-streaming app called Kick, refused to let users sign up without proof of age. Apps like Snap and TikTok did not comment on the findings. Google and X, which is owned by Elon Musk, did not respond at all. Meta, the company behind Instagram, said the test accounts did not act the way a real under-16 user would, so the results might not be a fair comparison.

Some of the fake accounts even received ads for youth banking products, which shows that some platforms did detect the young age listed. One account on X that said it was 16 was shown adult content, which raised more safety concerns. The researchers said this shows that the platforms may know a user is young but still are not blocking them properly.

Australia's government has grown frustrated with the slow progress. Officials warned five platforms in March that they could face lawsuits for not following the law. Last month, the government doubled the maximum fine that platforms can receive for breaking the rules. The government accused the tech companies of setting the ban up to fail.

The platforms say they are following the guidelines given to them by Australia's safety regulator. The rules say apps should start with low-friction checks, meaning they should not ask for too much personal information right away. Platforms are also not allowed to require government ID to sign up, because of privacy concerns. But critics say this approach has made it too easy for kids to lie about their age and get in anyway.

Some advisers who helped set up the original age-checking trial say they warned about this problem from the start. Colm Gannon, who advises a group focused on child safety, said researchers wanted to study how young people might cheat the system. 'We kept on being told that that wasn't part of the actual trial,' he said. Now, he says, lying about your age has become the most common way kids get around the ban.

Not everyone is ready to give up on the law. Amanda Third is a researcher who studies young people's digital rights, and she is helping with a two-year study of the ban's impact. She said the platforms were first expected to focus on accounts that openly said they were under 16 before using tougher age-checking methods later in the year. 'The next round of data that's collected after this point, we may be able to see some more impressive statistics,' she said. Australia's eSafety commissioner also said it still believes the platforms have the tools they need to keep kids under 16 off their apps.