Meta has removed access to more than 750,000 Facebook and Instagram accounts in Australia that it identified as belonging to users under 16, following the country’s landmark social media age restriction. Between December 2025 and June 2026, Meta deactivated around 462,000 Instagram accounts and 294,000 Facebook accounts as part of its compliance efforts.
Australia’s social media minimum-age law came into effect on December 10, 2025, requiring major platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent Australians under 16 from maintaining accounts. The policy was introduced amid concerns about children’s exposure to harmful content and the wider effects of social media on young people’s wellbeing.
Meta says it uses artificial intelligence and other signals to identify potentially underage users. These include information from profiles, birthday references, school-related details and reports about suspected underage accounts. The company has also introduced measures intended to prevent users whose accounts were removed from simply creating new accounts.
However, the numbers also raise questions about how effective Australia’s social media ban is. Government figures and independent research have indicated that a large proportion of Australian under-16s continued accessing social media during the early months of the restrictions. This suggests that removing accounts may not completely prevent young users from finding ways around age restrictions.
The debate is now shifting towards age verification and platform responsibility. Australian regulators are considering stronger enforcement measures, while technology companies argue that age checks could be more effective if handled at the device or app-store level rather than separately by every platform.
For parents, the development highlights the growing difficulty of managing children’s digital access. For governments, it raises a larger question: whether banning accounts can genuinely protect teenagers or whether stronger digital safety measures and parental involvement are needed alongside age restrictions.
