CANBERRA -- By a number of measures, Australia's groundbreaking law to restrict social media access for adolescents under 16 years of age has made waves since coming into effect last December.

Domestically, the biggest of these has been the cancellation of millions of accounts belonging to these youths. Foreign governments have taken Australia's move as a challenge to demonstrate their own skills at drafting rules to restrict minors' social network access.

Yet to Canberra's disappointment, it has become clear over the course of 2026 that mass account closures are not significantly reducing actual usage of social media by young people in Australia. Still, the government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is not giving up the quest.

Instead, the government has doubled down, securing parliamentary approval for increased penalties for social networks that fail to screen out underage users and new regulatory powers to request internal documents and data on the companies' practices. It has also proposed creating a wide-ranging "digital duty of care" requiring platforms to "take responsibility for the harms that their products, tools and features are causing Australians." Globally, many government are staking out tough stances against social networks these days, particularly in the wake of the settlement agreements announced last month under which Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, agreed to pay up to $18 billion to 52 U.S. state-level governments that argued the company had harmed children's health.

Although Meta did not admit wrongdoing, it has agreed to implement major changes to the way its platforms work for American minors, including a two-hour daily time limit, overnight blackouts and the hiding of feedback metrics such as post likes.

Although Meta did not admit wrongdoing, it has agreed to implement major changes to the way its platforms work for American minors, including a two-hour daily time limit, overnight blackouts and the hiding of feedback metrics such as post likes.

Meanwhile, more and more governments are moving forward with their own underage access controls. The European Commission announced plans last week for a law that would ban access to those under 13 and allow only limited access for those age 13 or 14, building on proposals already under discussion at a national level among EU members.

New Zealand lawmakers began debating an under-16 control bill last month. More than a dozen other countries are also considering restrictions according to the Global Social Media Age Restriction Tracker collated by Tech Policy Press.

"There is a global reckoning coming for big tech," said Australian Minister for Communications Anika Wells in announcing her government's latest proposals on Sept. 8. "Tech companies can still move fast, but they will no longer be allowed to break things because online harms have real-world consequences." European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced plans during her State of the European Union address on Sept. 16 in Strasbourg, France, for a law to ban social media access for those under 13.

The consequences the companies themselves will have to face in Australia are not yet clear. In March, Julie Inman Grant, charged as eSafety commissioner with implementing the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act, said her office was gathering evidence and moving to "an enforcement stance" regarding "significant concerns about the compliance of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube." But so far, none of them have been penalized for failing to block out underage users as the law demands, despite the initial threat of fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($35.2 million).

Adrian Lawrence, who heads the Asia-Pacific technology, media and telecommunications group at law firm Baker McKenzie in Sydney, said eSafety is moving cautiously out of concern for legal challenges by the tech companies. "It [would be] a tricky piece of litigation for a tricky dispute for both eSafety and for the social media companies," he said.

If the agency prevailed in court, Lawrence said, "that's an endorsement of the whole regime in a way. ... [But] if they lose that case, then that's problematic for them and for the government." Yet eSafety's own findings on continuing social media use by Australian minors are putting the agency on the spot to show it means business.

If the agency prevailed in court, Lawrence said, "that's an endorsement of the whole regime in a way. ... [But] if they lose that case, then that's problematic for them and for the government." Yet eSafety's own findings on continuing social media use by Australian minors are putting the agency on the spot to show it means business. As Australia's e-Safety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant is responsible for enforcing the country's under-16 social media restrictions.

According to findings the agency published in July based on youth surveys conducted in March and April, 81.5% of respondents between 10 and 15 are still using social networks covered by the law, down just slightly from the 85.9% rate measured in late 2025.

"Reductions in children's use of age-restricted platforms and account ownership have been limited in scale," the agency acknowledged.

"The foundational changes that platforms need to make for the policy to translate into real-world impacts haven't yet been delivered," the report said. "In particular, there was limited evidence that platforms are effectively preventing children from creating and maintaining accounts or effectively removing underage users." Young people use their smartphones in Sydney.

Such findings about social media networks come as no surprise to Dany Elachi, the Sydney-based founder of parental pro-control group Heads Up Alliance. "It's not in their interests to actually make the law work," he said, adding that even if difficult to enforce, the law had "drawn a line in the sand."

"The parent fightback is well and truly on," Elachi said. "Our children are not for sale and they deserve protection." The new measures advanced this month are likely to give Canberra's enforcement push more impetus. The first, passed by Parliament two weeks ago, raised the maximum penalty for failing to block underage access to AU$99 million and will allow the government to compel companies supporting networking platforms, such as age-verification technology providers, to provide records and witness testimony.

The first, passed by Parliament two weeks ago, raised the maximum penalty for failing to block underage access to AU$99 million and will allow the government to compel companies supporting networking platforms, such as age-verification technology providers, to provide records and witness testimony.

The other, establishing a digital duty of care to provide a safe online environment for all Australians "so far as is reasonably practicable," is proving more contentious. It defines several harms that children should be protected from, including abuse, harassment, bullying and exposure to pornographic material or content that encourages eating disorders, promotes misogyny, or glorifies crime or dangerous stunts.

Alerts from Meta networks ahead of last December's under-16 social media ban.

While the bill would apply to any company with an online presence, it takes aim at social media design features that it characterizes as having "negative behavioral impacts" including algorithms that give personalized recommendations, endless feeds and feedback displays such as counts of likes and reposts.

While the bill would apply to any company with an online presence, it takes aim at social media design features that it characterizes as having "negative behavioral impacts" including algorithms that give personalized recommendations, endless feeds and feedback displays such as counts of likes and reposts.

Albanese said at the Sept. 8 announcement that the law would require social media companies to allow users to opt out of algorithmically curated feeds and other features.

"It's about giving people control," he said. "It's about putting choice back into the hands of Australians online." Nicholas Carah, director of the Centre for Digital Cultures and Societies at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, believes the duty of care could ultimately have more impact than Australia's social media age limit.

Joined by activists campaigning to protect children from social media harms, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announces plans to create a "digital duty of care" in Canberra on Sept. 8.

AAP Image "How do you stop under-16s using these services? Turns out it's not very easy," he said. "Rather than ban young people, what we really ought to be doing is figuring out how to make these systems safer for young people.

"I sort of hope that what happens is that the digital duty of care, in a sense, begins to sort of override the social media ban [and] we start to see the digital duty of care as the thing that really matters," Carah said.

Some observers are less sanguine. Agata Stepnik, a research associate in digital communications at the University of Sydney, said networks are likely to be tempted to make their "opt out" versions relatively unappealing or inconvenient.

A 15-year-old's phone in Sydney with age-restricted apps including TikTok and Instagram on July 14.

"How these things are implemented, and whether or not the platforms are complying with what these regulations are intending is always the kind of argumentative, funny bit," Stepnik said.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, social media companies and industry groups are unenthused about the Australian government's recent moves.

In an official submission, the Digital Industry Group, an association representing major tech companies operating in Australia, said that while it partly supported the thinking behind the duty of care bill, it had a number of concerns. It cited vague compliance standards, the presumption that commonplace design features are inherently harmful and what it called "unfettered" powers that would be vested in the minister of communications and eSafety to define additional harms.

In an official submission, the Digital Industry Group, an association representing major tech companies operating in Australia, said that while it partly supported the thinking behind the duty of care bill, it had a number of concerns. It cited vague compliance standards, the presumption that commonplace design features are inherently harmful and what it called "unfettered" powers that would be vested in the minister of communications and eSafety to define additional harms. "Too much of the Duty's reach is left to the Minister and the Commissioner," it said.

Regarding the existing under-16 ban, Meta, which says it is already deploying artificial intelligence to improve its identification of underage users and meet its legal obligations, argues that blocks would be more effective on a device or app store basis rather than making it the duty of each network.

"Age could be verified once, when a young person sets up their device or downloads an app, rather than repeatedly across the dozens of apps they use," the company said in a blog post last month. "We share the Australian Government's goal of ensuring young people have safe, age-appropriate experiences online." While the under-16 ban received bipartisan support, the opposition Liberal-National coalition has come out against the duty of care bill, saying the minister's powers under the proposal would lay the groundwork for censorship.

"This exposure draft is unacceptable in its current form because the reality is it's providing a blank check for political censorship to the minister and to the government," said coalition leader Angus Taylor on Sept. 10.

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell takes questions on the $18 billion settlement agreements between 52 state-level U.S. governments and Meta on Aug. 26 in Boston.

The U.S. Embassy in Canberra has also entered the fray. Noting that the duty of care bill would particularly affect American companies, it asked the Albanese government in a statement this week to "withdraw any plans to mandate that platforms algorithmically suppress content based on ambiguous government-defined safety criteria." "A framework that empowers governments to enforce vague definitions of 'harm' risks becoming a mechanism for viewpoint-based censorship, as platforms will be incentivized to over-moderate speech that should be protected to avoid regulatory penalties," the embassy said.

Albanese rejects this argument. In unveiling the bill, he said, "Let's be very clear about what this is about: It's not about censorship, it's about giving people control themselves over what they see." Wells, the minister for communications, added that for adults, the bill's restrictions center on behavior already criminalized, such as child sexual exploitation, depictions of child abuse, harassment, violent and menacing conduct, and the promotion of terrorism and extremism.

Official surveys show that under-16 usage of restricted apps has not declined significantly.

"That's the kind of acts that we prohibited to adults online," Wells said. So far, Australian teens seem unconcerned with the duty-of-care debate. Sixteen-year-old Albab said he had no trouble while underaged setting up Instagram and TikTok accounts. "I just put my age as 20 when I signed up," he said. "I think most people fake their age." His friends under 16 are still using social media as much as they were before the new law. "I don't think it's changed that much," he said.