Tech giant Meta has blocked more than 544,000 accounts in Australia to comply with the country’s new law banning people under the age of 16 from using major social media platforms, Khaleej Times reported.
The legislation, which came into effect on December 10, 2025, requires platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Threads, TikTok and YouTube to prevent under-16s from having accounts or face fines of up to AUS$49.5 million (around US$33 million) for failing to take “reasonable steps” to comply.
According to Meta’s update, its enforcement included removing about 331,000 Instagram accounts, 173,000 Facebook accounts and 40,000 Threads accounts believed to belong to users under 16 during the first phase of the law’s implementation.
While Meta says it is committed to meeting the legal requirements, the company has urged the Australian government to consider more collaborative and effective approaches to protecting children online. Meta argues that blanket age bans may isolate teens from supportive online communities and drive them toward less regulated platforms. It has proposed that app stores should verify age and obtain parental consent before teens download age-restricted apps, reducing the need for repeated age checks across individual services.
Meta also pointed out concerns about the current age-verification process, describing it as complex in the absence of an industry standard and warning that the law’s early results “suggest it is not meeting its objectives of increasing safety and well-being for young Australians.”
The company has backed initiatives such as the OpenAge Initiative, which aims to create more standardized and privacy-preserving age-verification tools for participating platforms.
