Overview
- Australia’s eSafety regulator launched investigations into Meta, TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat for possible breaches of the national ban on under‑16s, with potential fines up to A$49.5 million.
- A compliance report found weak age checks that let teens keep retrying until they pass and poor barriers to new under‑16 accounts, and parent surveys showed nearly one‑third of under‑16s still have accounts and two‑thirds of those were never asked their age.
- Platforms reported removing about 4.7 million suspected underage accounts in January, yet the regulator said problems such as cyberbullying and image‑based abuse did not fall.
- Australia’s stance is influencing others, with Indonesia enforcing limits on under‑16s since March 28 and a Philippine senator proposing new curbs, as at least eight countries explore similar rules from Spain to Malaysia.
- Experts and rights groups say bans alone will not fix harms and can curb children’s rights, and recent U.S. court rulings against Meta and Google are adding pressure for product redesigns that better protect minors.