The Australian government announced Friday that more than 47 million social media accounts have been removed under the country’s new ban on those under the age of 16 accessing such services. File Photo by ghcassel/Pixabay
More than 4.7 million social media accounts belonging to Australians under the age of 16 have been removed since the nation’s new social media youth ban went into effect last month, Canberra announced Friday.
“Our government has acted to help keep kids safe online,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a statement.
“Change doesn’t happen overnight. But these early signs show it’s important we’ve acted to make this change. We want our kids to have a childhood and parents to know we have their backs.”
Albanese introduced the law in 2024, calling it “world-leading,” with the intent to protect Australia’s youth from harms presented online, including Internet addiction.
The ban went into effect Dec. 11, ordering the most popular social media platforms to remove accounts held by those under the age of 16 and to block the creation of new accounts.
Some social media companies, including Meta — which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads — began preemptively removing accounts held by those under the age of 16 and blocking the creation of new accounts for these youth starting Dec. 4.
Violations are to be enforced against the companies, not users. Platforms affected are: Facebook, Instagram, Threads, TikTok, X, Reddit, YouTube, Twitch, Kick and Snapchat. Others, such as Bluesky, Steam and WhatsApp, could be added if they gain significantly more users or are otherwise deemed social media instead of gaming or peer-to-peer communication services.
The preliminary figures announced Friday were what the Albanese government called a first tranche of information provided to the eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant.
There are approximately 2.5 million Australians between the ages of 8 and 15, according to statistics from the government, which said that in 2025, 84% of children between 8 and 12 had social media accounts.
“Now Australian parents can be confident that their kids can have their childhood back,” Minister for Communications Anika Wells said Friday in a Press conference in Murarrie, Queensland.
“They can discover and learn who they are before these platforms assume who they are. They can spend a summer making real-world connections with each other, with their siblings, with their parents, skateboarding, writing, reading, art, music. I don’t care what it is, but it’s off the screen and discovering for themselves who they are and forging connections in the real world.”
Grant told reporters that all 10 social media platforms were in compliance, and no other services were being considered to be added for now.
Given the number of youth and the number of accounts removed, journalists asked if the numbers were at all inflated. Grant said no, explaining that more than 95% of 8 to 15 year-olds were on YouTube.
“I’m very confident these numbers are right, but we will continue to check,” she said.
The law has attracted criticism from social media companies. Earlier this week, Meta voiced concerns that prohibiting youth from their services could isolate vulnerable teens from their online communities, while driving some to less reputable services.
Grant said that the government doesn’t expect the law to eliminate every account and it is not trying to prevent children from accessing technology.
“What we’re actually doing is we’re preventing predatory social media companies from accessing our children,” she said. “And we will be working on digital action plans so that we make sure that they’re building digital and algorithmic literacy into the years to come.”
Researchers at the University of Queensland have said that teenagers on social media have increased exposure to harm, social isolation, depression, anxiety and cyberbullying.
A 2024 study from Orygen, the world’s leading research and knowledge organization for youth mental health, found nearly all Australian youth reported daily social media use. It also found that nearly 40% spent three or more hours online a day.
The announcement comes days after Meta announced that it had so far removed more than 500,000 accounts from Facebook, Instagram and Threads.
