The social media ban for children under the age of 16
Today, 10 December 2025, Australia has become the first country to enact a social media ban for children under the age of 16. After a national campaign in 2024 run by ’36 Months’, legislative reform was pushed through the federal parliament in November 2024 to amend the Online Safety Act 2021 to establish obligations on providers of age-restricted social media platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent age-restricted users from having an account.
The Minister for Communications can now make legislative rules specifying services that are or are not covered by the definition of ‘age-restricted social media platform’, require the social media platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent children who have not reached minimum age from having accounts, and provide further privacy protections for information collected by social media platforms for the purposes of the minimum age requirement.
Users under 16 will no longer be able to create accounts on these 10 age-restricted social media platforms
What are the age restrictions on social media platforms?
As of 21 November 2025, eSafety listed the first 10 age-restricted social media platforms that were accepted by the Minister for Communications. Practically this means that users under 16 will no longer be able to create accounts on these 10 age-restricted social media platforms and if they already have an account, will have their account deactivated. It should be noted that this list is not exhaustive and is likely to be expanded as social media platforms continue to be evaluated.
To deter non-compliance, penalties have risen from 500 to 30,000 civil penalty units (currently equivalent to $9.9 million). This increases if the non-compliant provider is a body corporate (including online service provider) with a maximum penalty of 150,000 penalty units (currently equivalent to $49.5 million).
Which social media platforms will have age restrictions?
These 10 platforms have age restrictions as of today:
Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, Kick, X, Threads and Twitch
Which social media platforms currently do not have age restrictions?
eSafety currently considers that these platforms will not be age-restricted social media platforms: Discord, GitHub, Google Classroom, LEGO Play, Messenger, Pinterest, Roblox, Steam and Steam Chat, WhatsApp and YouTube Kids
Is everyone happy about it?
While these restrictions may have been welcomed by many, a constitutional challenge has been filed in the High Court of Australia by two 15 year olds, as part of the Digital Freedom Project, to argue the ban trespasses on teenagers’ implied freedom of political communication.
There is also speculation that global online forum Reddit may also seek to challenge the ban in the High Court regarding the same, however at this stage, it has been noted that they will comply with the law.
Otherwise, we expect this to be an area of ongoing interest, particularly as there are real and evolving implementation challenges for the platforms as ever-inventive teenagers will no doubt seek ways around the bans, and ongoing regulatory consideration of whether others should be added (or removed) over time.