By Byron Kaye
SYDNEY, July 7 (Reuters) – Australia’s online platforms are stumbling at the very first step in implementing age checks for users, rendering a world-first teen social media ban ineffective, a study by a team that advised the government’s rollout of the curbs found.
Since December, Australia’s new social media law has mandated that platforms including Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube bar people under 16 years from having accounts. Operators must take “reasonable steps” to comply, and the government has recommended using multiple checks to determine users’ age.
The ban, however, has been widely criticised, with studies suggesting most people under 16 are still able to access the platforms, prompting Australia to double the maximum fine last month and warn of court action against tech giants for non-compliance.
A team of software testers, which last year trialled age-assurance software on more than 1,000 Australians, found that platforms did not ask for age proof on any of the 50 accounts it opened after the law came into force and on which it declared the age as 16, the researchers told Reuters.
The previously unreported finding reveals a largely overlooked flaw: while the process has so far focused on the accuracy of photo-based age-assurance software, the initial vetting stage — which guesses a person’s age range based on their general online activity — does not appear to be picking up young users for further checks.
“You should be asked to demonstrate how old you are, and not once have we been asked to verify our age or use age-assurance measures,” said Andrew Hammond, director at testing firm KJR, which ran the original trial in 2025.
All 50 test accounts are active and have been distributed among nine of the 10 platforms that are subject to the age restrictions, including Meta’s Instagram, Snap’s Snapchat, TikTok and Alphabet’s YouTube, Hammond said.
Some dummy accounts received advertisements for youth banking products, an indication the platform registered the person’s age range, Hammond said. One account which signed up to Elon Musk’s X claiming to be 16 was served pornographic content, he added.
None of the platforms let users sign up if they declared they were under 16. But just one, Australia-based live-streaming platform Kick, refused to let users create an account without proof of age, the follow-up study found.
Snap and TikTok declined to comment, while Google and X, which is owned by SpaceX, did not respond to requests for comment.
A Meta spokesperson said Hammond’s shadow trial appeared inconsistent with the regulator’s guidance of escalating “to formal age verification when behavioural indicators suggest they may be underage, or when an account is reported”.
The spokesperson added that the dummy accounts were declared as over the minimum age and it was unclear if they had “posted content or engaged in a way a true under-16-year-old user would”.
A Kick spokesperson said it would not be feasible to rely on age inference as the platform was new and did not have enough data to guess user ages.
A spokesperson for the eSafety commissioner said the regulator “remains confident that age-restricted platforms have the technology and resources they need to prevent Australian children under 16 from having accounts”.
The recommended approach of increasingly robust checks “if implemented correctly ensures there is no single point of failure”, the spokesperson added.
CRITICISM OF 2025 TRIAL
After an initial claim that Australia’s ban had wiped some 4.7 million suspected underage accounts in a month, the rollout has faced near-constant reports of non-compliance. By March, the government warned of potential enforcement lawsuits against five platforms, and last month said it was doubling the maximum fine, accusing the platforms of setting the ban up to fail.
But the platforms have said they are following the regulator’s guidance which prioritises low-friction vetting as a first step. The platforms are prohibited from relying solely on government-issued identification, due to privacy concerns.
Some advisers to Hammond’s original trial said they had warned throughout the process that it was undermined by lack of testing for real-life circumvention, which includes under-16s entering false birthdates.
“We did want to talk about circumvention, but we kept on being told that that wasn’t part of the actual trial,” said Colm Gannon, Australia CEO of the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children, who advised the project.
“What we are now seeing is that circumvention has become the go-to by young people,” he added.
Amanda Third, a youth digital rights academic who advised the trial and is now participating in a two-year regulator study of the ban’s impact, said the platforms were always expected to start by targeting accounts that were self-declared as underage before escalating to age inference methods by mid-year.
“The next round of data that’s collected after this point, we may be able to see some more impressive statistics,” she said.
(Reporting by Byron Kaye; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
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