Under 16 and on Socials? Your Accounts Might Get Deleted Before the End of the Year

With the ban planned to happen in December this year, what are the next steps?

The eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant held a press conference this morning with the communications minister, Anika Wells.

The conference was to discuss the guidelines for the social media ban set to go ahead in December this year.

In less than four months, world-first legislation will ban users in Australia who are under 16 from accessing Facebook, Instagram, X, Snapchat, Reddit and YouTube.

Inman Grant said that social media platforms from 10 December will be expected to take a “multilayered waterfall approach” for age checking, to ensure that government ID is never the only or final choice for people to verify their ages.

Social media companies like Meta and Google have been told they need to focus on removing or deactivating accounts for those under 16 before 10 December.

Companies will also need to work around people potentially using virtual private networks (VPNs) to bypass the ban.

Inman Grant says some companies are already making moves on age-checking such as Roblox using age assurance technology that relies on age estimation.

Julie Inman Grant further went on to say that it’s been a “scare tactic” to claim that every Australian will need to have their age checked.

She said, “adults should not see huge changes to the platform … we think it would be unreasonable if platforms verified everyone’s age.”

Inman Grant will be meeting with Apple, Discord, Character AI, Open AI, Anthropic, Google and Meta in Silicon Valley next week.

While she does admit she doesn’t expect to see all under-16 accounts to be gone by 10 December, she said the commissioner’s office will engage informally with companies that aren’t complying with the new ban before moving up to potential court action and fines of up to $50m.