National

Landmark social media ban bites as teens lose accounts

Jan 16, 2026

a woman checking her phone outside Parliament House — The mass exodus of Australian children from social media has been hailed as a positive step. -AAP Image

Almost five million social media accounts have been deactivated or restricted since Australia's world-first age restrictions took effect.

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Figures released by the federal government on Friday show the scale of the crackdown, aimed at better protecting children younger than 16 from online harms.

The eSafety commission has been closely monitoring social media platforms since the laws took effect on December 10.

It says more than 4.7 million accounts were deactivated, removed or restricted by December 12.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the mass exodus of children from social media was a positive step.

"It's encouraging that social media companies are making meaningful effort to comply with laws and keep kids off their platforms," he said in a statement.

"Change doesn't happen overnight but these early signs show it's important we've acted to make this change."

Under the laws, social media platforms are required to take reasonable steps to prevent children younger than 16 from accessing their apps.

Australia is the first country to take such a step, inspiring other nations - including the UK, Malaysia and New Zealand - to consider similar age restrictions.

While some teenagers have managed to bypass the age limits, which include digital ID, face scans and sophisticated algorithms, the data shows a large number have already been booted off platforms.

Communications Minister Anika Wells said eSafety would dig into the data to determine which platforms were performing well and which ones needed to improve.

"We know there's more work to do and the eSafety Commissioner is looking closely at this data to determine what it shows in terms of individual platforms' compliance," she said in a statement.

"While it's early, every account deactivated could mean one extra young person with more free time to build their community and identity offline."

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, this week said it had taken down more than half a million Australian user accounts before the ban.

Meta said between December 4 and 11, it had taken down 330,639 Instagram accounts, 173,497 Facebook accounts and 39,916 Threads accounts it believed belonged to people younger than 16.