Australia’s government is moving to tighten enforcement of its ban on social media accounts for children younger than 16, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese saying the state is now weighing whether its own machinery has been forceful enough. On Friday, Albanese said the government was asking whether the laws were as strong as possible and whether eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, Australia’s online safety watchdog, had every power at her disposal.
Who Holds the Levers
The push comes from the top of the state apparatus, which is preparing digital duty of care legislation as part of increased efforts to enforce the social media ban. Albanese said the proposed legislation would hold platforms accountable for foreseeable harms caused by content and algorithms. In other words, the burden of policing children’s access is being pushed through law, regulators and corporate compliance systems rather than through any meaningful control by the people affected.
The government’s move follows evidence that the ban on young children holding accounts on platforms including Facebook, Instagram and YouTube had failed since it came into force on Dec. 10 last year. Australia was the first country in the world to pass legislation keeping youth off social media, but others have since followed. Britain announced last week plans to ban children under 16 from a range of platforms to protect them from harmful content and excessive screen time. Canada, Brazil and Indonesia have introduced legislation or announced age-based restrictions or requirements for children’s access to social media, and France, Spain, Denmark, Thailand and South Korea are among others studying or developing similar approaches.
Who Pays for the Failure
The people at the bottom are the ones living with the consequences of a policy that has not worked as advertised. Melbourne’s RMIT University expert on information sciences Lisa Given said the government’s proposed reform was a response to evidence that the ban was failing. The evidence included eSafety’s own data released in March that showed seven in 10 underage children continued to hold accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok since December. Given also pointed to a study published in the British Medical Journal on Wednesday that found 85% of a group of Australian 12 to 17-year-olds were using restricted platforms.
Given said, “I do think it’s failing.” She also said, “Many kids in the media have reported that they also think that this is really a failed exercise.” Those are the voices closest to the policy’s impact, and they are not describing success.
Inman Grant said in April she was considering court action against Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube, alleging they were not doing enough to keep young Australian children off their platforms. These platforms, as well as X, Kick, Reddit, Threads and Twitch, face fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($34 million) if they fail to take reasonable steps to remove the accounts of young children. The enforcement model is a familiar one: regulators threaten punishment, platforms calculate risk, and children remain the object being managed.
What They Call Enforcement
The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported Inman Grant saying in an interview in early June, “I don’t have potent powers.” She was also quoted as saying, “What I would say is a regulator is only as good as the tools and the resources that they’re given.” The Associated Press asked Inman Grant’s office on Friday to comment on the accuracy of that reporting, but her office did not immediately reply.
Given said Inman Grant faced a challenge in enforcing legislation that platforms were resisting. She said, “Either the eSafety Commissioner needs more powers or we’ve got to have some other approach to enforcement.” Given expected the courts would need to decide what constituted “reasonable steps” required by the law to be taken to keep children off platforms.
That leaves the whole arrangement where it began: a law written from above, a regulator asking for more force, corporations resisting, and courts poised to define the limits of compliance. The state says it is protecting children; the record in March and Wednesday suggests the ban has not kept them off the platforms, and the machinery now being expanded is more enforcement, more legal pressure, and more control over digital life.