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From late 2025, Australians must be over the age of 16 to legally use social media.
The Australian government officially passed a bill today (28 November) which will see under-16s banned from using social media.
Earlier this month, the Australian government proposed 16 as the minimum age for minors to use social media and laid the onus on social media platforms to carry out reasonable actions to prevent any younger users from harmful content which may negatively impact their mental health.
The bill has been hotly debated, with the country’s prime minister Anthony Albanese, MP and Michelle Rowland, MP, the country’s minister for communications expressing concerns about the harms of social media for young people. Rowland said that applications such as TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram were among the platforms that could face repercussions for any breaches to this bill.
Australia’s Senate passed the bill 34 votes to 19, while its House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved the legislation 102 votes to 13 yesterday. From late 2025, Australians must be over the age of 16 to use social media.
As a result of the new legislation, any social media platforms that breach the bill could face fines of up to A$49.5m. However, the Australian government did not specifically outline how it expects social media platforms to enforce age limits.
The government previously received criticism from X owner, billionaire Elon Musk, who said in a post on X: “Seems like a backdoor way to control access to the internet by all Australians.”
And Google and Meta urged lawmakers to delay the bill until the impact of it could be assessed.
Another critic was Australian Senator Matt Canavan, who opposed the bill and said lawmakers had only been able to review a fraction of the 15,000 submissions made about it. He described the area as “highly complex” and didn’t think the process should be rushed.
Efforts to safeguard children
Australia’s banning of underaged users from social media is the latest instance of governments acting against social media platforms in the name of children’s wellbeing.
Earlier this year, it was announced that New York City had filed a major lawsuit against several social media companies to hold them accountable for their alleged “damaging influence” on the mental health of children.
The companies listed as defendants in the lawsuit are Meta, Tiktok-owner Bytedance, Snap, Google and YouTube, while plaintiffs were listed as New York City’s school district and its health and hospitals corporation.
And just last month, both the US and UK governments issued a joint statement announcing a children’s online safety working group aimed at making the internet safer for minors, while also advocating for increased transparency from online platforms.
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