The commissioner tasked with overseeing the implementation of Australia’s world-leading laws to get children and teenagers off social media says the ban is unlikely to catch all underage users immediately.
While e-Safety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said she was confident work was on track to meet the December 10 deadline as planned, she also flagged that it was wrong to expect the ban would mean under-16s were immediately scrubbed from platforms when it came into force.
“This legislation does not give us a mandate to cut the Coral Cable or deplatform social media apps on stores,” she told the National Press Club in Canberra on Tuesday.
“Nor should we create expectations that every child’s social media account will magically disappear overnight.”
In her address, she characterised the controversial laws as a social media “delay” rather than an outright ban, despite its blanket application for all Australians under the age of 16 — even if they already own an account or have parental consent.
Communications Minister Anika Wells will determine what platforms will fall under the ban’s umbrella, with TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook already named.
On Tuesday, it was revealed the commissioner provided advice to Ms Wells stating YouTube should also be captured, despite the previous communications minister initially carving it out.
The provided rationale was new research conducted by the eSafety Commission that found YouTube was the most common platform where young people experienced harm, which included viewing violent, misogynistic and dangerous content.
A spokesperson for Ms Wells said she was carefully considering the commissioner’s advice.
“Her top priority is making sure the draft rules fulfil the objective of the act — protecting children from the harms of social media,” they said in a statement.
Dr Inman Grant’s task is to figure out how the laws will be implemented, including deciding on the “reasonable steps” social media companies will be expected to take and enforcing the laws, which include fines of up to $50 million for platforms that do not comply.
There are no penalties for young people or parents who circumnavigate the rules.
The guidelines given to social media companies, she said, would likely include what age assurance and privacy measures they needed to have in place and the “level of proactive detection required by services to identify underage users”.
Questions over age verification
It is so far unclear how exactly social media platforms will ascertain users’ ages.
The commissioner said it would likely involve a combination of age assurance methods — “a waterfall of effective techniques and tools” — rather than one mandated technology.
A government-commissioned trial of available age assurance technology found last week that options existed to verify the ages of users “privately, robustly and effectively”, but the preliminary report did not include any details of the specific tests nor how the 53 different technologies involved fared.
“There will be challenges with each one of them, but what the preliminary findings do say is that the technology is here and it’s possible,” the commissioner said.
“None is going to solve every use case, but again, we expect that companies will take layered approaches.”
Shadow communications minister Melissa McIntosh called on the government to make it clear what it expected from social media platforms, including which ones were covered by the laws, with just months to go before the deadline.
“There are more questions than answers right now, including what verification technology will be required, which platforms are in or out and what constitutes platforms taking reasonable steps to implement social media age minimum standards by 10 December 2025,” she said in a statement on Tuesday.
The commissioner, who was to begin consultations this week, said there would be more clarity once the minister made her final determination of the rules.
“We may be building the plane a little bit as we’re flying it … but I’m very confident we can get there,” Dr Inman Grant said.
Laws about changing norms
While the commissioner conceded that there would be ways for young people to work around the bans, including through the use of VPNs, she said the goal was to change norms around social media use.
“We are not building a great Australian internet firewall, but we are seeking to protect under-16s from those unseen yet powerful forces in the form of harmful and deceptive design features that currently drive their engagement online,” she said.
“For that reason, it may be more accurate to frame this as a social media delay.”
The delay, she argued, would buy time to deliver improved online safety education to young people grappling with the rise of artificial intelligence, deepfakes, bullying and tailored algorithms.
It would also, she said, shift the onus to manage young people’s online access off parents and onto tech giants.
“This world-leading legislation seeks to shift the burden of reducing harm away from parents and carers and back onto the companies themselves — the companies who own and run these platforms and profit from Australian children,” she said.