Technology & Science
Australia Enforces Under-16 Social-Media Ban With A$49.5 Million Penalties
On 10 December 2025 Australia activated the Online Safety Amendment law, forcing major platforms to purge users under 16 or face steep fines, marking the first nationwide cut-off of minors from mainstream social media.
Focusing Facts
- Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and seven other platforms now risk fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$32.9 m) per breach if they keep Australian accounts held by children under 16.
- eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant will issue formal compliance notices on 11 December 2025 and has promised a public progress report before Christmas.
- Communications Minister Anika Wells said more than 200,000 Australian TikTok accounts had already been deactivated on day one of the ban.
Context
Governments have periodically stepped in when new mass-market technologies began reaching children—think the 1969 U.S. broadcast ban on cigarette ads after rising youth smoking, or the 1998 COPPA rules limiting data collection from under-13s on websites. Australia’s move is a sharper turn of the screw: instead of parental consent it imposes a hard age wall, enforced by algorithmic age-verification and multi-million-dollar penalties. It sits at the intersection of two long arcs: a century-long expansion of the state’s duty to shield minors, and the post-2016 global backlash against the unregulated power of Big Tech. Whether the ban endures or inspires imitators will hinge on enforcement tech and societal tolerance for surveillance work-arounds; yet if effective, historians in 2125 may see 2025 as the moment democratic governments stopped merely moderating content and instead dictated who could be online at all.
Perspectives
Australian national media
e.g., ABC News, The Statesman — Frame the new under-16 social-media ban as a pioneering child-protection reform that lets families “take back power” from Big Tech and restores a real childhood. By echoing the prime minister’s celebratory language and omitting dissenting voices, the coverage risks functioning as a relay for the government’s talking points while glossing over civil-liberty or feasibility concerns.
Business and financial press
e.g., Yahoo Finance, Financial Post — Treats the law primarily as a regulatory burden on platforms, stressing multimillion-dollar fines and the practical headaches in verifying ages and shutting accounts. Because their audiences track market and compliance risks, the stories highlight enforcement costs and loopholes, potentially underplaying the social-welfare rationale championed by policymakers.
International tabloids & general-interest outlets
e.g., Daily Mail Online, Gulf Today — Spotlight dramatic anecdotes—tearful children locked out, influencers losing income, kids faking facial hair—to depict the ban as disruptive and ripe with work-arounds. Sensational storytelling geared toward maximum reader emotion and clicks may exaggerate outlier cases and sow doubt about effectiveness rather than weighing broader societal impacts.