{"id":692685,"date":"2026-03-30T15:17:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T15:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/692685\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T15:17:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T15:17:15","slug":"five-social-media-platforms-investigated-over-compliance-with-under-16-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/692685\/","title":{"rendered":"Five social media platforms investigated over compliance with under-16 ban"},"content":{"rendered":"

Five social media platforms are being investigated by the government’s online safety watchdog for potentially failing to comply with the ban on users under 16, almost four months after the world-leading laws came into force.<\/p>\n

Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube are being investigated for “potential noncompliance” with the ban, Communications Minister Anika Wells revealed, as the eSafety Commissioner prepares to release an update on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The report will detail examples of social media companies allowing underage users to repeatedly attempt age assurance until they pass and failing to do enough to stop teenagers and children opening new accounts after being kicked off.<\/p>\n

It will also allege that some companies have failed to introduce clear and effective mechanisms for parents and other people to report underage users.<\/p>\n

The day the snap streaks ended \u2014 for some teens, at least<\/a><\/p>\n

After a year of waiting, Australia’s world-leading laws to block kids from accessing social media are officially enacted. But the teens they’re meant to impact say not much has actually changed.<\/p>\n

“If eSafety finds these companies have systemically failed to uphold their legal obligations, I expect the commissioner to throw the book at them,” Ms Wells said in a statement.<\/p>\n

“All of the platforms covered by our social media minimum age requirement said they would respect the law.<\/p>\n

“If these companies want to do business in Australia, they must obey Australian laws.”<\/p>\n

Social media giants face fines of up to $49.5 million if they fail to take reasonable steps to comply with the ban, but there is no penalty for parents or children who go around it.<\/p>\n

When the ban was introduced on December 10, teenagers used social media to brag about still being able to access their accounts<\/a>. At the time, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman-Grant said there had been “teething issues” as platforms deployed new age-assurance technologies.<\/p>\n

“If there’s egregious noncompliance, I think that will be pretty obvious pretty quickly and then we start an investigation,” she told the ABC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant is tasked with policing compliance with the ban. (ABC News: Liam Patrick)<\/p>\n

The following month the government revealed that more than 4.7 million accounts were deactivated in the first two days of the ban<\/a> and preliminary analysis by the eSafety Commissioner found social media companies had made “meaningful attempts” to remove underage users.<\/p>\n

Tech companies \u2014 which vocally opposed the ban \u2014 are required to provide data on how they are responding to the ban to eSafety under the laws.<\/p>\n

Last week Ms Wells announced that the definition of platforms covered by the ban would be updated to include those with infinite scroll, “feedback features” such as likes or upvotes and time-limited elements, such as disappearing stories.<\/p>\n

The 10 platforms that fall under the scope of the ban \u2014 Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X, Reddit, YouTube, Kick and Twitch \u2014 will be assessed against the new rule.<\/p>\n

It will not impact other sites such as Discord, Google Classroom, WhatsApp and Roblox, which are excluded under existing laws.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Five social media platforms are being investigated by the government’s online safety watchdog for potentially failing to comply…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":692686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[290078,147037,4740,290077,290075,1066,563,68909,6586,50,40263,70377,2397,27761,290076,3893,3894],"class_list":["post-692685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-age-verification-online","tag-anika-wells","tag-australia","tag-can-you-get-around-the-social-media-ban","tag-esafety-commission","tag-facebook","tag-instagram","tag-julie-inman-grant","tag-kick","tag-news","tag-snapchat","tag-social-media-ban","tag-tiktok","tag-twitter","tag-what-platforms-are-under-the-social-media-ban","tag-x","tag-youtube"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116318794454740233","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}