Australia’s under-16 social media ban took effect December 10. By lunchtime, VPN searches were spiking and workarounds were being shared online. Four weeks later, here’s what actually happened.
What the eSafety Commission Said Would Happen
“Enforcing a minimum account age of 16 will create normative change and give young people a reprieve from powerful and persuasive design features built to keep them hooked, often enabling harmful content and conduct online,” eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said on December 10.
The Commission acknowledged enforcement wouldn’t be perfect: “We recognise no single safety measure is a silver bullet but restricting social media accounts for under 16s is part of a holistic approach.”
Now, four weeks in, here’s what that looks like in practice.
Platform Compliance: Mixed Results
Most platforms began removing accounts on or before December 10. Meta started deactivating Instagram, Facebook and Threads accounts on December 4. TikTok deactivated all under-16 accounts regardless of what email or name was used. YouTube automatically signed out account holders. Snapchat suspended accounts for three years.
Twitch delayed deactivating existing accounts until January 9 but the company hasn’t explained why.
The eSafety Commission says it’s too early to assess enforcement effectiveness, with a summary of findings expected later in January.
In their December 10 statement, the Commission warned: “Age assurance can involve a range of steps for both new and current users, including reviews and appeals processes. These processes may take several days or even weeks to complete fairly and accurately.”
Translation: the Day One chaos was expected. The question is whether it settles into effective enforcement or permanent workarounds.
The Three Enforcement Challenges
1. VPNs
VPN companies advertised directly to Australian teens, promoting their services as a way to bypass the ban by masking location. Google Trends shows search volume for “VPN” spiked as the ban went live.
The government insists VPNs won’t work if platforms follow eSafety Commissioner guidelines properly. Communications Minister Anika Wells told ABC: “These social media platforms have so much data on us because we choose to give it to them because we like social media.”
Whether platforms can reliably detect VPN usage at scale remains to be tested. The eSafety Commission suggested costs for suitable VPNs “are in the thousands of dollars” and therefore out of reach of most teenagers—a claim VPN providers dispute, with services available for a few dollars monthly.
2. Age Verification Defeated
Age verification is being circumvented. Parents reported their 15-year-olds passing both Snapchat’s and Instagram’s over-16 age checks within minutes of trying.
Platforms are using facial age estimation technology (live video selfies analysing facial data points), but determined teens are finding ways through. One privacy concern that dominated pre-ban debate—government ID requirements—hasn’t materialised. The legislation “specifically prohibits platforms from compelling Australians to provide a government-issued ID,” according to eSafety’s FAQ.
Instead, platforms use email verification, behavioural signals, and facial estimation. Whether these methods adequately protect privacy while effectively preventing access remains under review.
3. Platform Migration
Alternative platforms surged as the ban approached. Photo-sharing app Yope gained 100,000 Australian users by word of mouth. ByteDance’s Lemon8 (a TikTok-like platform) became the most downloaded free app on the Apple App Store in Australia on December 10. Both are now on the eSafety Commissioner’s watch list.
The Commission says it will keep adding platforms to the banned list as they gain popularity, but critics call this “whack-a-mole”—new platforms will always emerge faster than regulators can ban them.
Following the ban, parents and professionals in Western Australia shared monitoring frameworks tracking where children are actually migrating. The four categories being watched:
Banned apps: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, X, Reddit, Threads, Twitch, Kick
High-risk workarounds: Discord, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Kik, Amino, Yubo/Monkey (Omegle-style random chat), BeReal clones
Should be monitored: Roblox (DMs + voice chat), gaming platforms (Xbox/PlayStation/Steam chat), Messenger, Pinterest, game-specific chat
Red flags: Apps allowing anonymous profiles, no photo required, or AI-generated avatars, features that make it easier for adults to pose as children
Read the full monitoring framework
The Safety Paradox
Here’s the unintended consequence parents discovered: children can still watch YouTube, scroll through TikTok, and browse Instagram, they just can’t log in.
This means they’re viewing everything without filters or age-appropriate protections. YouTube itself warned parents that its parental controls “only work when your teen is signed in.”
Parents have lost their monitoring tools. The platforms’ built-in parental controls, screen time limits, and content filters all required logged-in accounts.
Minister Anika Wells shot back: “If YouTube is reminding us all that it is not safe… that’s a problem that YouTube needs to fix.”
Some Families Are Actually Relieved
Not every Australian family is fighting the ban. Some parents report their children seemed relieved when the decision was taken out of their hands.
One tech support company described what happened: “The chat disappeared. The kids were relieved. The parents were relieved. The pressure was gone.”
Research supports this. Studies show college students would pay $50 to deactivate social media for a month, but would pay researchers to make it happen if their peers did the same. Individual bans create social isolation. Government bans solve what researchers call a “collective action problem.”
Who Gets Left Behind
Not everyone sees the ban as entirely protective. Tiina, a special education teacher based in Spain, raises a concern that’s been largely absent from the debate: what happens to children with disabilities who relied on social media as their primary way to connect?
“For kids with autism, severe social anxiety, mute kids, deaf kids—social media was their only outlet,” she explains. “They found like-minded people, they found solutions, they used it to feel part of the world. Now government has taken away their tools and left them with nothing.”
Social media platforms, for all their documented harms, also provided spaces where neurodivergent children could communicate without the pressures of face-to-face interaction. Where deaf children could connect through visual communication, where kids with social anxiety could practice interaction at their own pace.
The ban makes no exceptions for therapeutic use or disability accommodations. A 15-year-old with autism who used Instagram to connect with others in the autism community now has the same access as every other 15-year-old: none.
Tiina also points to the COVID generation, children who were 3-5 years old during lockdowns and are now in primary school. “These kids missed out on critical social skills development. They don’t know how to critically think, imagine, share, or care for others in the way previous generations did. I see it every day in my classroom.”
Her concern: if these children already struggle with in-person connection, removing their digital tools could further isolate them rather than help them develop real-world skills.
The eSafety Commission appears to be aware that different families face different challenges. In November, they established a Parent Advisory Group specifically designed to represent diverse communities including people with disability, LGBTIQ+ communities, First Nations peoples, Culturally and Linguistically Diverse families, regional and remote communities, and families from low socio-economic backgrounds.
Commissioner Inman Grant said the group would provide “support that is practical, accessible and grounded in real family experience.”
Whether that translates to accommodations for neurodivergent children who relied on social media therapeutically remains to be seen. The Commission hasn’t published specific guidance on exceptions or disability accommodations.
What We Still Don’t Know
Does VPN usage become normalised or remain fringe? Four weeks isn’t long enough to tell if VPNs become standard workaround or if platforms can reliably detect them.
Do alternative platforms get added to the banned list fast enough? The eSafety Commissioner can add platforms, but the regulatory process takes time. Yope and Lemon8 gained users in days.
Has mental health improved? Too early to measure. Stanford University researchers are tracking affected teens’ sleep patterns, mental health, and behavior changes over at least two years.
What happens when school resumes? Australian schools return in late January. Will peer pressure drive workaround adoption? Will schools address the monitoring gap for gaming platforms and chat features?
Are families finding balance or workarounds? Some report relief. Others report frustration. The ban’s success may depend less on enforcement and more on whether families embrace the “new normal” or actively circumvent it.
What Happens Next
January 9: Twitch must deactivate existing under-16 accounts.
Late January: The eSafety Commission publishes its first summary of findings assessing platform compliance and early outcomes.
Ongoing: The High Court constitutional challenge continues. Two 15-year-old Australians argue the ban violates their constitutional right to freedom of political communication. Communications Minister Anika Wells told Parliament: “We will not be intimidated by legal challenges. We will not be intimidated by Big Tech.”
Within two years: The Minister must initiate an independent review of the law’s operation.
Commissioner Inman Grant’s warning on Day One still applies: “eSafety will not hesitate to take enforcement action where it identifies systemic breaches of the law, including seeking penalties of up to $49.5 million.”
The platforms now have weeks, not months, to prove they’re taking “reasonable steps.”
The World Is Watching
Malaysia’s under-16 ban took effect January 1, 2026. Norway implements its age-15 ban mid-2026. Denmark is finalising plans. The European Union is running age verification pilots across five countries.
They’re all asking the same questions: Can age verification work at scale? Do kids find permanent workarounds? Does removing social media actually improve wellbeing, or just push teens into harder-to-monitor spaces?
Australia didn’t just ban social media for under-16s. It became the world’s test case for whether government restriction can work in the digital age.
Four weeks in, the verdict is: enforcement is messy, workarounds exist, some families are relieved, and the most vulnerable may be left behind.
The real question isn’t whether the ban is perfect. It’s whether imperfect restriction is better than no restriction at all.
We’ll continue tracking how this unfolds.
Sources: eSafety Commission, CNN, TechRadar, NBC News, NZ Herald, TIME, Stanford Social Media Lab
