Meta has deactivated more than half a million accounts for teenagers across Facebook, Instagram and Threads as a result of Australia’s under-16s social media ban, the company has announced. Source: The Guardian.
Just over one month since the ban came into effect, Meta announced yesterday that between December 4, when the company began deactivating accounts, and December 11, 544,052 accounts Meta believed to be held by users under 16 were deactivated.
That included 330,639 on Instagram, 173,497 on Facebook and 39,916 on Threads.
“Ongoing compliance with the law will be a multi-layered process that we will continue to refine, though our concerns about determining age online without an industry standard remain,” Meta said in a blog post published yesterday.
The 10 platforms the federal Government announced were covered by the ban – Twitch, Kick, YouTube, Threads, Facebook, Instagram, Snap, X, TikTok and Reddit – had all implemented age checks on December 10, 2025.
After the ban was brought in, the office of the eSafety commissioner sent questions to the platforms asking how many accounts had been deactivated but eSafety has yet to release this data.
The Albanese Government has said the ban would not be perfect right away, and teens gloated about evading it in replies to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s social media accounts after it came into effect.
The federal Opposition, which campaigned for the policy before it was adopted by the Government, last week said the ban implementation had “fallen flat”.
“Many under-16 accounts have not been deactivated, while others that were initially removed have since become active again,” the shadow communications minister, Melissa McIntosh, said.
“New accounts are being created and the age-verification tools that the Government assured Australians would be effective, have proven laughably easy to bypass with some makeup and good lighting.”
Australia’s social media ban is being closely watched for its success in other parts of the world. The UK Labour government is facing pressure to bring in a similar ban, with UK Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch stating at the weekend her party would back a ban on social media for under-16s.
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Meta blocked nearly 550,000 accounts in first days of Australia’s under-16s social media ban (By Josh Taylor, The Guardian)
