{"id":785217,"date":"2026-07-07T17:26:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T17:26:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/785217\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T17:26:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T17:26:13","slug":"australias-teen-social-media-ban-fails-to-clear-first-hurdle-in-age-checks-study-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/785217\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia\u2019s teen social media ban fails to clear first hurdle in age checks, study says"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australia\u2019s online platforms are stumbling at the very first step in implementing age checks for users, rendering a world-first teen social media ban ineffective, a study by a team that advised the government\u2019s rollout of the curbs found.<\/p>\n

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Since December, Australia\u2019s new social media law <\/a>has mandated that platforms including Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube bar people under 16 years from having accounts. Operators must \u2060take \u201creasonable steps\u201d to comply, and the government has recommended using multiple checks to determine users\u2019 age.<\/p>\n

The ban, however, has been widely criticised, with studies suggesting most people under 16 are still able to access the platforms, prompting Australia to double the maximum fine last month and warn of court action against tech giants for non-compliance.<\/p>\n

A team of software testers, which last year trialled age-assurance software on more than 1,000 Australians, found that platforms did not ask for age proof on any of the 50 accounts it opened after the law came into force and on which it declared the \u2060age as 16, the researchers told Reuters.<\/p>\n

The previously unreported finding reveals a largely overlooked flaw: while \u200bthe \u2060process has so far focused on the accuracy of photo-based age-assurance software, the initial vetting stage \u2014 which guesses a person\u2019s age range based on their general online activity \u2014 does not appear to be picking up young users for further checks.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou should be asked to demonstrate how old you are, and not once \u2060have we been asked to verify our age or use age-assurance measures,\u201d said Andrew Hammond, director at testing firm KJR, which ran the original trial in \u200b2025.<\/p>\n

All 50 test \u2060accounts are active and have been distributed among nine of the \u200c10 platforms that are subject to the age restrictions, including Meta\u2019s Instagram, Snap\u2019s Snapchat, TikTok and Alphabet\u2019s YouTube, Hammond said.<\/p>\n

Some dummy accounts received advertisements for youth banking products, an indication the platform registered the person\u2019s age range, Hammond said. One account which signed up to Elon Musk\u2019s X<\/a> claiming to be 16 was served pornographic content, he added.<\/p>\n

None \u200cof the platforms let users sign up if they declared they were under 16. But just one, \u200cAustralia-based live-streaming platform Kick, refused to let users create an account without proof of age, the follow-up study found.<\/p>\n

Snap and TikTok declined to comment, while Google and X, which is owned by SpaceX, did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

A Meta spokesperson said Hammond\u2019s shadow trial appeared inconsistent with the regulator\u2019s guidance of escalating \u201cto formal age verification when behavioural indicators suggest they may be underage, or when an account is reported\u201d.<\/p>\n

The spokesperson added that \u2060the dummy accounts were declared as over the minimum age and it was unclear if they had \u201cposted content or engaged in a way a true under-16-year-old user would\u201d.<\/p>\n

A Kick spokesperson said it would not be feasible to rely on age inference as the platform was new and did not have enough data to guess user ages.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the eSafety commissioner said the regulator \u201cremains confident that age-restricted platforms have the technology and resources they need to prevent Australian children under 16 from having accounts\u201d.<\/p>\n

The recommended approach of increasingly robust checks \u201cif implemented correctly ensures there is no single point of failure\u201d, the spokesperson added.<\/p>\n

Criticism of 2025 trial<\/p>\n

After an initial claim that Australia\u2019s ban had wiped some 4.7 million suspected underage accounts in a month, the rollout has faced near-constant reports of non-compliance. By March, the government warned of potential enforcement lawsuits against five platforms, and last month said \u200cit was doubling the maximum fine, accusing the platforms of setting the ban up to fail.<\/p>\n

But the platforms have said they are following \u200bthe regulator\u2019s guidance which prioritises low-friction vetting as a first step. The platforms are prohibited from relying solely on government-issued identification, due to privacy concerns.<\/p>\n

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Some advisers \u200cto Hammond\u2019s original trial said they had warned throughout the process that it \u2060was undermined by lack of testing for real-life circumvention, which includes under-16s entering false birthdates.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did want to talk about circumvention, but we kept on being \u2060told that that wasn\u2019t part of the actual trial,\u201d said Colm Gannon, Australia CEO of the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children, who advised the project.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we are now seeing is that circumvention has become \u200cthe go-to by young people,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Amanda Third, a \u200byouth digital rights academic who advised the trial and is now participating in a \u200ctwo-year regulator study of the ban\u2019s impact, said the platforms were always expected \u200bto start by targeting accounts that were self-declared as underage before escalating to age inference methods by mid-year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe next round of data that\u2019s collected after this point, we may be able to see some more impressive statistics,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia\u2019s online platforms are stumbling at the very first step in implementing age checks for users, rendering a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":785218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-785217","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\/785217","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=785217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/785218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=785217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=785217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}