{"id":533591,"date":"2026-03-11T15:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T15:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/533591\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T15:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T15:56:08","slug":"snapchat-told-an-australian-mother-it-would-not-delete-her-sons-account-because-his-listed-age-was-25-social-media-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/533591\/","title":{"rendered":"Snapchat told an Australian mother it would not delete her son\u2019s account because his listed age was 25 | Social media ban"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Australian mother who reported her 14-year-old\u2019s Snapchat<\/a> account has been rebuffed by the social media company, because his self-declared age was 25.<\/p>\n

Parents of teens who have eluded the social media ban have been told to report their children\u2019s accounts to the platforms to get them kicked off, but some platforms are not acting on it, Guardian Australia can reveal.<\/p>\n

Amanda*, a Tasmanian mother, reported her son\u2019s account to Snapchat this month as being an account held by a teen under 16 in Australia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In communications seen by Guardian Australia, Snap acknowledged Amanda\u2019s complaint, but said it ultimately took no action on the account.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a parent I feel angry, dismayed and honestly quite vulnerable about how this process has unfolded,\u201d Amanda said. \u201cI reported an account belonging to my 14-year-old through the proper channels and expected that a clear underage report from a parent would be enough for the platform to act.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n

The teen\u2019s self-declared age in the app is 25, and there were no signals in the account\u2019s behaviour to indicate it was held by someone under 16, so the account was not locked, Snap said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe investigated this report but given the declared age of the user is over 16 and all inferred age signals pointed to an age over 16, we could not verify that this user is under 16,\u201d a Snap spokesperson told Guardian Australia.<\/p>\n

Given Snap does not examine the contents of messages, there are limited signals in account behaviour to suggest someone might be underage. If the company were to lock any account after a report suggesting that user might be underage, it could lead to malicious false reports of users 16 years and over, Snap said.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for eSafety on Tuesday said it had heard from other parents in similar situations to Amanda, who weren\u2019t able to get their teens\u2019 accounts removed.<\/p>\n

\u201ceSafety has received similar reports and is actively engaging with industry \u2013 including Snap \u2013 about our expectations for compliance,\u201d a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

\u201ceSafety\u2019s regulatory guidance makes clear that eSafety considers reasonable steps include providing accessible pathways for people to report potential underage account holders to trigger further age assurance processes and taking a layered or \u2018waterfall\u2019 approach across the user journey.\u201d<\/p>\n

The spokesperson said a platform \u2013 when a report is not suspected to be malicious \u2013 should require that user to go through some form of age verification rather than relying on previous age inference signals such as self-declared age or facial age estimation.<\/p>\n

\u201ceSafety is concerned that some platforms are not doing enough and we are progressing regulatory investigations,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n

Teenage girl looking at a mobile phone. Photograph: monkeybusinessimages\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

In January, when the federal government was keen to trumpet the success of the social media ban in the removal of nearly 5m Australian accounts from 10 social media platforms, the eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, told parents they could report their teens\u2019 accounts to the platforms directly.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they want the platforms to know \u2026 we\u2019ve asked them specifically to have information flows for that,\u201d she said. \u201cThis allows them to know where they failed and then to improve their classifiers.\u201d<\/p>\n

A News Corp survey this week of nearly 300 teens between the ages of 10 and 16 found 70% of them had not been booted off social media<\/a> when the ban came into effect in December.<\/p>\n

The Snap spokesperson said Snapchat had warned about technical challenges in preventing young people from using the apps when the ban was brought in.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is one such challenge. We continue to believe there are better solutions to age verification that can be implemented at the primary points of entry, such as the operating system (OS), device, or app store levels,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the meantime, we continue to assess every report we receive of users believed to be under 16 and disable or lock all accounts found to be non-compliant.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Guardian Australia\u2019s enquiries, the company contacted Amanda to provide ID documentation for her son, and his account was shut down on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Amanda said while the government had promised the ban would make it easier for parents, \u201cthe reality of trying to enforce them has left me feeling that the burden has been pushed back on to families\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf governments are serious about minimum age rules, should platforms be required to implement technology such as facial age estimation or ongoing age verification rather than relying on parents to report accounts and provide ID?\u201d<\/p>\n

The eSafety commissioner last month announced a study<\/a> following more than 4,000 teens and parents to measure the success of the ban over the coming years.<\/p>\n

* Names have been changed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Australian mother who reported her 14-year-old\u2019s Snapchat account has been rebuffed by the social media company, because…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":533592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-533591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}