Australia passes landmark law banning social media for children under 16

Australian lawmakers on Thursday passed a landmark law to ban social media for children under 16, establishing some of the strictest regulations in the world.

According to NBC News report, the ban, aimed at mitigating the effects of excessive social media use on children’s physical and mental health, will apply to platforms such as X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and Reddit, though YouTube is not included.

Platforms will be solely responsible for enforcing the age restriction and have one year to implement the measure, which is the most stringent of any country. Failure to prevent children from creating accounts could result in fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars ($33 million), added the report.

The law is expected to take effect in November 2025.

After a parliamentary session that went into the night, the country’s Senate, or upper house of parliament, voted to pass the law after the centre-left Labor government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese won support from the conservative opposition.

The Senate’s approval for the law is the final legislative hurdle after the lower house, or House of Representatives, passed the bill on Wednesday.

Albanese, trying to lift his approval ratings ahead of an election expected in May, had argued that social media posed risks to the physical and mental health of children and is looking for support from parents.

Australia plans to trial an age-verification system that may include biometrics or government identification to enforce the ban. The trial will run for several months and its findings would be reviewed by mid-2025.

In submissions to parliament, Alphabet’s Google and Meta said the ban should be delayed until the age-verification trial finishes, expected in mid-2025. Bytedance’s TikTok said the bill needed more consultation, while Elon Musk’s X argued the proposed law might hurt children’s human rights.

A Senate committee backed the bill this week, but also inserted a condition that social media platforms should not force users to submit personal data such as passport and other digital identification to prove their age.

Other countries have tried to impose limits on social media for children, including the US, which requires technology companies to obtain parental consent to collect data from children under 13. But the Australian proposal goes further, with no exemptions for parental consent or pre-existing accounts, reported NBC News.

With inputs from agencies