Onlykashmir.in News Desk
Meta has removed more than 750,000 accounts it suspected belonged to Australians under the age of 16 since a world-first ban on teen social media use came into effect, the company disclosed this week. The scale of the takedown offers one of the clearest windows yet into how technology platforms are responding to Australia’s landmark restriction, one of the most aggressive regulatory interventions any country has attempted against youth social media use.
According to figures released by the company, Meta deactivated 462,000 suspect Instagram accounts and 294,000 suspect Facebook accounts between the period just before Australia’s ban took effect in December and June of this year. The company has framed the removals as evidence of proactive compliance, promising further action as regulators weigh whether additional intervention is warranted.
No other major platform has published compliance data covering the same date range, making it difficult to independently assess how Meta’s enforcement effort compares with rivals operating under the same restriction. Australian government figures, along with several independent studies, have separately found that more than eight in ten under-16s remained active on social media during the ban’s first three months, a gap that has fuelled scepticism about how effectively the restriction is being enforced across the industry as a whole.
That disconnect between company-reported takedowns and continued underage usage has hardened Australian authorities’ stance toward the platforms. Canberra has accused technology companies of effectively setting the ban up to fail, arguing that enforcement measures announced publicly have not translated into meaningful reductions in youth access. In response, the government has introduced legislation to double the maximum penalty for non-compliance to $69.75 million and to grant regulators expanded powers to compel platforms to hand over internal documentation.
The dispute is being closely watched well beyond Australia, as several other countries weigh similar age-restriction laws for social media platforms. Australia’s experience, both the scale of account removals Meta is reporting and the persistence of underage usage despite them, is likely to shape how other governments calibrate penalties and enforcement mechanisms if they move ahead with comparable restrictions of their own.
