Meta Begins Removing Young Users Ahead of Australia’s Social Media Ban

As Australia prepares to implement the world’s first social media ban for users under 16, Meta is already taking action—removing its youngest users from Facebook, Instagram, and Threads ahead of the new law. The company announced on Wednesday that it will start to kick existing under-16 users off its platforms from Dec. 4, notifying them through a mix of email, SMS, and in-app messages. It will also ban under-16s from creating new accounts. The ban does not cover Meta’s Messenger app. Facebook has more than 150,000 monthly active Australian end-users aged 13-15, while Instagram has more than 350,000, according to a report from the country’s independent online safety regulator. Meta acknowledges that the ban’s implementation won’t be smooth. “While we are working hard to remove all users who we understand to be under the age of 16 by Dec. 10, compliance with the law will be an ongoing and multi-layered process,” the company’s global head of safety, Antigone Davis, said. The company’s actions come as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government prepares to enforce sweeping, age-based restrictions across multiple social media platforms. Starting next month, Australians under 16 will also be banned from using TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, X, Reddit, and the livestreaming site Kick. Companies that fail to comply face fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars (about $32 million). How the law will be enforced, however, remains unclear. Critics—including tech companies and rights groups—have called the restrictions “vague,” “problematic,” and “rushed,” questioning whether they will meaningfully reduce online harms to children. In a statement to TIME, a Meta spokesperson said: “While we’re committed to meeting our legal obligations, we’ve consistently raised concerns about this law. Experts, youth groups, and many parents agree that blanket bans are not the solution—they isolate teens from online communities and information, while providing inconsistent protection across the many apps they use.” Albanese has defended the plan, arguing that even an imperfect system is better than none. “We acknowledge that this won’t be absolute,” Albanese told TIME in February. “But it does send a message about what society thinks and will empower parents to have those conversations with their children.” How Meta Plans to Enforce the Ban Meta said it began notifying affected users two weeks before their access will be revoked. Those users will be able to download their data or update contact details so the company can reach them when they turn 16. “For all our users aged 15 and under, we understand the importance of the treasured memories, connections, and content within your accounts,” said Mia Garlick, Meta’s regional policy director. “When you turn 16 and can access our apps again, all your content will be available exactly as you left it,” Garlick added. Suppose a user is wrongly flagged as being under 16; they can verify their age through Meta’s third-party facial age-verification partner Yoti, by providing a government-issued ID or a video selfie. Meta says Yoti deletes all data after verification. Determining who is under 16, however, poses a challenge, given how easily users can lie about their ages. Meta said it will remove users it understands to be under 16 by next month, using unspecified age assurance methods. But an Australian government report acknowledges that such methods may make mistakes: it found that for people aged 16 and 17, false rejection rates stayed “above acceptable levels” for facial age estimation, at 8.5% and 2.6% respectively. Davis says Meta believes in a better approach to assess a user’s age, “a standard, more accurate, and privacy-preserving system,” such as age-verification methods starting from the mobile app store. “This, combined with our investments in ongoing efforts to assure age and verify that signal and provide age-appropriate experiences like Teen Accounts, offers more comprehensive protection for young people online.” Mounting criticism of the ban Beyond technological hurdles, Meta has urged the Australian government to consider an alternative to an outright ban. “There’s a better way,” the company spokesperson said, “legislation that empowers parents to approve app downloads and verify age allows families—not the government—to decide which apps teens can access.” Meta wasn’t the only social media company to question the ban. Elon Musk’s X in September sought to delay the ban, questioning the lawfulness and compatibility with Australia’s other laws. Teen users have also pushed back, as social media has been a crucial tool for youth groups to organize. “We rely on digital spaces to advocate for systemic change,” one advocate told local broadcaster Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). “We use it to advocate for ourselves.” Young users also raised concerns about potential social isolation if they’re kicked off the platforms. And even when the ban finally takes effect, affected users have already discussed ways to flout it, including using VPNs and burner accounts. “Everyone’s going to get around it,” one 14-year-old TikTok creator told ABC. In the same interview, the creator’s mother also disagreed with the ban, adding that young users don’t even need to have any accounts to access harmful content online. “Shouldn’t we be focusing on removing the harmful content?” The technology involved in detecting user activity to estimate age has also raised concerns about surveillance. “Age inference works by watching what we do online over long periods to guess our age,” Hassan Asghar, who teaches computer science at Macquarie University, told Australian broadcaster Special Broadcasting Service, “essentially encouraging tech companies to constantly monitor our digital behavior.” But the ban has broad public support and has earned recognition from other countries, which have indicated similar measures. New Zealand is reportedly considering similar legislation, and a similar proposal for under-15s emerged in the Netherlands. “We don’t argue that these laws will be perfect in their implementation,” Albanese said on Nov. 10, around a month before the ban takes effect. “We do argue very strongly though that this is the government of Australia setting down what we expect to happen: including reminding social media companies that they have a social responsibility, and that they need to be conscious about their social license, like other businesses.”