Six Months In, Five Million Accounts Blocked, Still Not Enough: Australia Doubles Big Tech Fines Over Failed Youth Social Media Ban

Six months after Australia became the first country in the world to ban under-16s from social media outright, the government has concluded the law isn't working well enough — and Big Tech is paying the price. On Saturday, June 27, the Albanese government announced it will double the maximum fine for systemic breaches of the world-first ban, from A$49.5 million to A$99 million (roughly US$31 million to US$68 million), while handing the country's online safety regulator stronger powers to force compliance from five major platforms it is actively investigating for falling short.

What Was Announced

The new legislation, confirmed by the government on Saturday, lifts the maximum civil penalty for systemic non-compliance with Australia's Social Media Minimum Age law from 150,000 penalty units (currently A$49.5 million) to 300,000 penalty units (A$99 million) — doubling the financial deterrent facing platforms found to be repeatedly or deliberately failing to keep children off their services. The legislation will also expand the eSafety Commissioner's enforcement toolkit, giving the regulator stronger powers to compel platforms into compliance rather than relying solely on after-the-fact litigation and fines.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese framed the move as a direct response to platforms gaming the spirit, if not always the letter, of the law. "It's clear Big Tech are not doing enough to comply with the law – there are still too many children on social media," Albanese said. "These changes reflect the seriousness with which we take any failure by social media companies to comply." Communications Minister Anika Wells was more pointed still, telling reporters: "Based on the regular updates I receive from the eSafety Commissioner, it is clear to me that social media platforms are adopting tricks straight out of the Big Tech playbook and doing the bare minimum" to satisfy their obligations.

The Five Platforms Under Investigation

The eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, is actively investigating possible breaches by five of the platforms covered under the ban: Meta's Facebook and Instagram, Google's YouTube, Snap's Snapchat, and TikTok. Inman Grant indicated as early as April that she was weighing court action against this same group of companies, alleging they were allowing children who had already self-declared as under 16 to make repeated attempts at age verification rather than being locked out after a failed attempt, and that the platforms had insufficient measures in place to stop those same minors from simply creating new accounts once an old one was blocked.

The full slate of platforms originally covered by the ban — Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Snapchat, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), Threads, Twitch, Kick, and YouTube — were all age-restricted from December 10, 2025, when the law came into force. The government says more than five million accounts held by under-16s have been blocked or deactivated since that date. But that figure, in the government's own assessment, has not been enough: too many children, officials say, are still finding ways onto the platforms the law was specifically designed to keep them off.

Why the Government Says the Ban Is Falling Short

The case for strengthening the law rests on accumulating evidence — both from the regulator's own monitoring and from independent academic research — that determined under-16s have found multiple workarounds to the restrictions. Children have continued to evade the rules by using accounts registered to adults, creating fake profiles with falsified ages, or accessing platforms through private browsers and other methods designed to obscure their age and location.

A peer-reviewed evaluation published this month in the British Medical Journal lent academic weight to those concerns, finding "insufficient evidence" that the ban had sharply reduced social media use among young Australians. Researchers surveyed more than 400 children both before the measure took effect and again three months after, and documented what they described as "substantial circumvention" of the restrictions during that window — a finding that directly undercuts the government's stated rationale for the law even as it doubles down on enforcement rather than abandoning the approach.

How Platforms Are Supposed to Comply

Under the existing framework, age-restricted platforms must demonstrate they have taken "reasonable steps" to prevent Australians under 16 from holding accounts — a deliberately flexible standard that allows different platforms to satisfy the obligation through different technical means. Some platforms use artificial intelligence systems to estimate a user's age from photos, videos, or behavioural signals; others offer users the option to verify their age using government identification, while still being required to provide some non-ID-based alternative method. The eSafety Commissioner has published detailed regulatory guidance — drawing on the government's own Age Assurance Technology Trial and extensive consultation with the platforms themselves — to help companies determine which verification methods are likely to satisfy the legal standard.

The Rules governing exactly which platforms count as "age-restricted social media platforms" were themselves amended in March 2026 specifically to better target services with what the government describes as "addictive or otherwise harmful design features" — though eSafety's subsequent reassessment of the platforms it had already identified concluded the amendment did not change which services were covered.

Legal Challenges Are Already Underway

The strengthened penalties arrive even as the underlying ban itself faces active legal challenges in Australia's courts. The Digital Freedom Project — whose president, John Ruddick, is a Libertarian member of the New South Wales Legislative Council — is challenging the law with two 15-year-olds, Macy Neyland and Noah Jones, named as plaintiffs; a special directions hearing on that case is scheduled for 2026, with arguments not expected before February at the earliest. The state governments of New South Wales, South Australia, and Western Australia have all announced they will formally oppose that challenge.

Separately, and more prominently, Reddit is pursuing its own legal action in Australia's High Court, with barrister Perry Herzfeld leading the case on the company's behalf. Reddit's argument cuts directly against the law's core premise, contending that "a person under the age of 16 can be more easily protected from online harm if they have an account, being the very thing that is prohibited" under the ban, and separately arguing the law unconstitutionally restricts the political discourse rights of young Australians. The federal government has said it will defend against Reddit's lawsuit.

A Global Test Case Being Watched Closely

Australia's ban — and now its decision to toughen rather than soften it in response to evidence of widespread circumvention — is being closely watched by governments around the world grappling with the same underlying question: whether and how to restrict children's access to social media platforms increasingly linked to concerns about youth mental health. The United Kingdom, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, and New Zealand are among the countries actively watching or considering similar restrictions, while France, Spain, Denmark, Thailand, South Korea, Canada, Brazil, and Germany have variously introduced legislation or announced their own age-based requirements. Britain announced its own plans earlier this month for restrictions that, notably, would go even further than Australia's, extending coverage to gaming and live-streaming platforms in addition to conventional social media.

The political backdrop in Australia helps explain why the government is choosing escalation over retreat in the face of evidence the ban isn't fully working. News Corp Australia's newspapers ran a sustained campaign called "Let Them Be Kids," publicising the experiences of parents who had lost children to suicide linked to social media bullying, and that campaign played a significant role in building the political momentum behind the original 2024 legislation. At the same time, Guardian Australia's interviews with teenagers found most were opposed to the ban and skeptical of its effectiveness even before it took effect — and reporting in February found that while some under-16s had successfully been locked out, others who managed to retain access reported feeling more isolated from peer communication, while still others noticed their feeds had changed in ways that left parents frustrated rather than reassured about the policy's actual impact.

What Happens Next

A spokesperson for the prime minister said the precise timing for introducing the strengthened legislation to parliament has not yet been finalised, though the government has indicated it will have more to say on the matter soon. Beyond the doubled fines, Albanese confirmed the government will also proceed with separate digital duty of care legislation, which would hold platforms directly accountable for foreseeable harms caused by their content and recommendation algorithms — a complementary regulatory track running alongside the age-restriction enforcement push.

For now, the practical reality remains exactly what the government's own announcement implicitly concedes: more than five million under-16 accounts have already been blocked under a law that came into force six months ago, and an independent peer-reviewed study has found no strong evidence that overall social media use among Australian children has meaningfully dropped as a result. Whether doubling the maximum fine to A$99 million, combined with expanded regulatory powers, succeeds where the original penalty regime fell short — or whether children simply continue finding new workarounds faster than platforms and regulators can close them — will be the central test of Australia's status as the world's foremost experiment in legislating children off social media.

Sources

1. Al Jazeera — Australia to double fines on Big Tech as children bypass social media ban
2. CNBC — Australia toughens kids' social media ban, doubles tech firm fines
3. NPR — Australia plans to strengthen laws banning children from social media
4. Australian eSafety Commissioner — Social media age restrictions
5. Wikipedia — Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024
6. UNICEF Australia — Social media ban in Australia: A simple guide