Meta says it deactivated 756,000 suspected under-16 accounts in Australia
The Facts
- Meta said it has deactivated about 756,000 Australian accounts assessed as belonging to under-16 users.
- The total comprises 462,000 Instagram accounts and 294,000 Facebook accounts as of June 30.
- Meta said more than 500,000 of those accounts were removed before the law took effect.
- The totals are up from 331,000 Instagram and 173,000 Facebook accounts Meta reported removing by January.
- Australia's minimum-age-16 social media law took effect on December 10, 2025, the first such national law.
- The law requires platforms including Meta, Snap and TikTok owner ByteDance to block under-16 account holders.
- Australia's internet regulator is considering an enforcement lawsuit against platforms, including some Meta owns.
- Meta said it uses AI to scan profiles, posts and captions for contextual clues about a user's age.
- Meta said verifying users' ages remains difficult, and research indicates many teens still circumvent the restrictions.
- Meta and other platforms opposed the law publicly but say they intend to comply with it.
Context
What does Australia's law actually require of platforms?
Covered platforms must take reasonable steps to stop under-16s from opening accounts or continuing to use existing ones Dünya. The rules apply to companies including Meta, Snap and TikTok owner ByteDance, and were adopted over concerns about social media's effects on children 7sur7,Sudinfo.be.
How does Meta decide an account belongs to someone under 16?
Meta says it uses AI to analyse profiles, posts, comments and captions for contextual clues such as birthday celebrations or mentions of school grades, and to assess reports about suspected underage accounts cnbctv18.com,Vorarlberg Online. The company says such verification remains difficult shz.de.
What is still unresolved?
Australia's internet regulator is weighing an enforcement lawsuit against platforms it says have not taken sufficient compliance steps, including some Meta owns Reuters,Straits Times. Meta says enforcement is ongoing and the account figure is expected to rise Anadolu Ajansı, while researchers report many teenagers still access accounts by evading age checks Kurier.
Where Left and Right agree, and where they split
- Where Left and Right agree
- Meta's own AI inference is doing the actual screening, and the company's self-reported deactivation totals are not by themselves adequate proof that the law is being honored.
- Where Left and Right split
- Whether the story is about a public finally setting the rules for platforms and needing real enforcement, or about the state handing a private firm the power to judge who may hold an account.
How left and right read it
A public deciding, through law, what companies may do with children is exactly the kind of power that ought to sit with democratic institutions rather than with platforms — and the fact that Australia's minimum-age-16 rule is the first of its kind makes it a genuine test of that principle. Meta's reported deactivations have roughly doubled since January, yet the regulator is still weighing an enforcement suit against platforms including some Meta owns. Self-reported compliance is not the standard; independent enforcement must be.
The first national minimum-age law matters less for what it does to teenagers than for the precedent of deputizing private firms to police who may hold an account. Because the law puts that obligation on the platforms, the screening tool becomes Meta's AI reading profiles, posts and captions for age clues, and accounts were already coming down before the law even took effect. A power exercised by inference at that scale should be contained, not copied.
The receipts — all 108 sources
Wire services (8)
Independent coverage (50)
Facts first. Then every angle.
The day’s biggest stories in one short brief — the facts everyone agrees on, then the competing values behind the headlines. Free in your inbox.