Meta has shared new information on its compliance with Australia’s under-16 teen social media ban, with the corporate reporting that since June 2025, it has eliminated entry to greater than 750,000 Australian accounts throughout Fb and Instagram which its methods decided belonged to individuals under the minimal age.
That’s up from the 550,000 teen accounts Meta reported in January. The corporate has been working to enhance its detection and enforcement as Australian authorities enhance stress on social apps to stick to its new guidelines.
As per Meta: “Enforcement is ongoing, and these numbers will proceed to develop. We report our enforcement to the eSafety Commissioner and can proceed to publish updates periodically with a view to be clear with the general public.”
Meta stated the rise in account enforcement actions was because of the continued enchancment of its detection methods, with its synthetic intelligence-powered instruments particularly catching extra teen accounts over time.
“We use AI to research profiles — together with posts, feedback, bios and captions — for contextual clues that an account could belong to somebody beneath 16, akin to birthday celebrations or mentions of college grades,” Meta stated.
As well as, Meta stated it’s additionally made it simpler for fogeys and the neighborhood to report a suspected underage account. The corporate additionally ran an academic marketing campaign throughout each Fb and Instagram that highlighted how Meta detects and removes under-16 accounts, and what occurs to a teen’s account and reminiscences when the account is eliminated.
Cumulatively, this has led to a rise in enforcement actions. Nevertheless, the Australian eSafety Fee’s personal information confirmed that, at this stage at the least, most under-16s within the nation are nonetheless accessing social media apps, regardless of elevated efforts from the platforms and the related authorities.
Earlier this month, Australia’s eSafety Fee launched a standing replace on the effectiveness of the under-16 social media ban. The report discovered that 81.5% of underage customers continued to entry restricted apps.
The Fee leveled the blame for this primarily on the apps themselves.
“Throughout age-restricted platforms, the primary cause kids gave for why they nonetheless held an age-restricted account was that the platform hadn’t but requested them to verify their age (50.2%) [while] others reported that the platform had incorrectly estimated their age (18.2%),” the Fee stated.
As such, the eSafety Fee vowed to extend penalties for apps that did not adjust to the brand new necessities. Although these necessities additionally stay pretty obscure and open to interpretation.
Meta has repeatedly highlighted this as an issue, and has known as for extra uniform enforcement throughout the board to make sure a stage taking part in subject.
“Our main concern is that platforms will not be taking a constant strategy to how they’re eradicating teenagers,” Meta stated in its newest replace. “There must be a single dependable age sign delivered on the working system or app retailer stage. Age could possibly be verified as soon as, when a teenager units up their system or downloads an app, moderately than repeatedly throughout the handfuls of apps they use.”
Meta has repeatedly stated that app store-level age verification and uniform steering are more practical approaches than having particular person platforms enact their very own age-checking processes.
Up to now, nevertheless, the eSafety Fee has tagged early issues as a part of the preliminary implementation interval, and stated that it’s going to take a while to see the true impact of the restrictions.
Along with failures in enforcement, the Fee’s replace additionally stated that almost all kids noticed no enchancment in detrimental impacts related to problematic on-line use.
