A day after the law took effect with bipartisan support and backing from about three-quarters of Australian parents, TikTok and other platforms were awash with posts from supposed under-16s. One wag posted on the Prime Minister’s own TikTok saying, “I'm still here, wait until I can vote”.
Under the law, 10 of the largest platforms, including TikTok, Meta’s Instagram, and Alphabet’s YouTube, must block underage users or risk fines of up to A$49.5 million (€30.4 million). Canberra said the companies would need time to establish workable systems.
Albanese told Sky News: “This is the law, this isn't something that can be flouted” and added that young users bragging about staying online “just tells the platforms who they are, and so it will be taken down”, he said.
Governments worldwide are watching the rollout as they weigh similar crackdowns. Nine newspapers reported that US Republican senator Josh Hawley endorsed the ban on launch day, while France, Denmark and Malaysia have said they are considering their own versions.
Communications minister Anika Wells said the eSafety Commissioner would ask all affected platforms to report their numbers of under-16 accounts in the days leading up to and after the ban came into force on Wednesday.
Albanese has cast the ban as protection from mental health harms, including bullying, body image issues and addictive feeds. While some teens boasted about evading the rules, creators complained about plunging follower and view counts. Canberra said roughly 200,000 TikTok accounts had already been deactivated.
Meta repeated its opposition to the law, warning that experts, advocates and parent groups feared it would push teens to less regulated corners of the internet and that there was “little interest in compliance”. A spokesperson said this would lead to inconsistent enforcement and would not keep young people safer.
Reactions were fiery. US psychologist Jonathan Haidt called the policy “the most significant measure to protect children from social media harms”. US television presenter “Dr” Phil McGraw said on NewsNation that the ban would “help immensely and force them to engage with the environment, with friends, get out into the real world”. A week earlier, Oprah Winfrey claimed it would change a generation’s lives.
UNICEF warned the ban might push children into poorly regulated spaces and said age restrictions could not replace better design and content moderation.
Visiting a Canberra school, Albanese said the ban would improve education and behaviour since “you get better social interaction when students aren't subject to looking at their devices constantly”.
Searches for VPNs surged to their highest level in about 10 years the week before the ban, according to Google’s public data.
All 10 platforms named in the law opposed it before agreeing to comply. Some platforms not covered by the ban promptly climbed Australia’s download charts, prompting the government to insist the platform list was “dynamic”.
Lemon8, owned by TikTok parent ByteDance, introduced a minimum age of sixteen. Yope, a photo-sharing app, told Reuters it had seen “very fast growth” to about 100,000 Australian users, about half of whom were over sixteen. The firm said it had told the regulator it viewed itself as a private messaging service rather than social media.
