Anadolu staff<\/p>\n
31 July 2026\u2022Update: 31 July 2026<\/p>\n
Social media account ownership among children under 16 in Australia saw a small drop following the implementation of national minimum age restrictions, the Australian government’s eSafety Commissioner announced Friday.<\/p>\n
Data released in a three-month evaluation report by the commissioner showed that the proportion of under-16s holding social media accounts fell from 52.4% to 42.1% after the Social Media Minimum Age (SMMA) law took effect on Dec. 10, 2025.<\/p>\n
According to the report, overall social media use among under-16s, whether or not they had an account, also declined slightly from 85.9% to 81.5% during the initial three-month period.<\/p>\n
The evaluation also noted positive shifts in family dynamics, including fewer children reporting a fear of missing out.<\/p>\n
However, the agency said a majority of underage users who had accounts before the law took effect were still able to retain them or open new ones at the three-month mark, attributing the issue to platforms failing to implement effective age assurance measures.<\/p>\n
The eSafety Commissioner stated that complex investigations into platform compliance remain ongoing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anadolu staff 31 July 2026\u2022Update: 31 July 2026 Social media account ownership among children under 16 in Australia…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":835665,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44,296002],"class_list":["post-835664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news","tag-sitekeywords"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835664","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=835664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/835665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=835664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=835664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=835664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}