Australia banned children aged under 16 from using social media. But 85% of teens are still using it.
Australia’s social media ban, the Social Media Minimum Age Act 2024, for under-16s came into effect in December 2025. Nearly eight months later, not a lot has changed.
Four in five teens are still active users on social media platforms, according to new research, which found, ‘insufficient evidence to conclude that exposure to the Act had any early substantial effects on social media use among adolescents aged under 16 years.’
The researchers observed 408 Australian children aged between 12 and 17, and discovered that over 85% of young teenagers were still using social media three months after the ban began.
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People report that academics believe it will take a decade for the ‘full impacts’ of the ban to be evident.
The study found that teens were coming up with ways to dodge the ban, by using a private browser to access accounts or having a ‘fake’ account.
The researchers found that daily social media use was ‘relatively stable’ amongst teens, even with the restrictions, and ‘limited policy implementation’ was in place. They concluded that there was ‘insufficient evidence of any substantive early effects’ of the ban on the social media use of adolescents.
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However, Lynn Perry, chief executive of children’s charity Barnardo’s in the UK, where a similar ban has been announced, says that while no safeguarding measure is foolproof, ‘the possibility that some young people may try to bypass age restrictions cannot be used as an excuse for leaving millions of children exposed to harmful content.’
She says that tech companies need to take responsibility for making their platforms safe and that the government need to hold the companies to account.
Liz Kendall, the UK’s Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, says that the UK will be using highly effective age assurance to support the ban for the country’s teens.
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