Australia’s online safety regulator has launched formal investigations into Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, Snap, TikTok and Google’s YouTube amid concerns the tech giants may be failing to comply with the country’s landmark social media ban for children under 16 years old.
Bloomberg reports that the eSafety Commissioner’s office released its first compliance report on Tuesday, revealing what it described as “significant concerns” about how major platforms are enforcing the world-first legislation that took effect on December 10, 2025. The regulator identified major gaps in the companies’ policing measures, including insufficient safeguards to prevent underage users from creating new accounts and systems that allow children to repeatedly attempt age verification until they succeed.
The investigation marks the first formal assessment of how Big Tech companies have responded to Australia’s pioneering crackdown on youth social media access. The law, which prohibits children under 16 from holding accounts on major platforms, has been closely watched globally as other jurisdictions consider similar measures to protect young people from online harms.
According to the eSafety report, some platforms are prompting children to prove they are over 16 even after the users have already declared themselves to be underage. This loophole, among others, has allowed significant numbers of children to remain on social media despite the ban. While the regulator noted there are fewer under-16s with accounts than four months ago, it emphasized that substantial numbers of children are still accessing these platforms.
“These platforms have the capability to comply today and we certainly expect companies operating in Australia to comply with our safety laws,” said eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant in a statement. “They can choose to do so or face escalating consequences, including profound reputational erosion with governments and consumers globally.”
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, responded to the investigation by reaffirming its commitment to the ban. In a statement to Breitbart News, a spokesperson wrote:
We are committed to complying with Australia’s social media ban and working constructively with eSafety and the government.
We’ve also been clear that accurately determining age online is a challenge for the whole industry, particularly at the age‑16 boundary where the Government’s own Age Assurance Technology Trial noted “natural error margins”. The most effective, privacy‑protective and consistent approach is to require robust age verification and parental approval at the app store and operating system level before a teen can download an app or create an account. That’s how you protect young people not just on major platforms, but across the other more than two million available apps, many of which may have weaker safeguards.
In the meantime, we’ll keep investing in enforcement to detect and remove under‑16 accounts and support parents, while advocating for a system that’s workable in practice and delivers better safety outcomes for young people.
Google did not respond to a request for comment from Breitbart News.
The regulatory scrutiny comes at a particularly sensitive moment for social media companies. Just days earlier, Meta and Google were found liable for damages in a US case involving a 20-year-old woman’s mental health struggles, which she attributed to social media addiction. That verdict has intensified debate about whether tech platforms are facing a “Big Tobacco” moment, potentially losing their long-held protections from legal responsibility for content and user experiences on their services.
The eSafety investigation encompasses Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube. For any successful enforcement action, the regulator must demonstrate that platforms failed to take reasonable steps to prevent under-16s from maintaining accounts. The cases could set important precedents for how strictly Australia’s social media ban will be enforced and what standards of compliance will be expected from global tech companies operating in the country.
Read more at Bloomberg here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
