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Meta has deactivated more than half a million accounts for teenagers across Facebook, Instagram and Threads as a result of Australia’s under-16s social media ban, the company has announced.
Just over one month since the ban came into effect, Meta announced on Monday that between 4 December, when the company began deactivating accounts, and 11 December, 544,052 accounts Meta believed to be held by users under 16 were deactivated.
That included 330,639 on Instagram, 173,497 on Facebook and 39,916 on Threads.
“Ongoing compliance with the law will be a multi-layered process that we will continue to refine, though our concerns about determining age online without an industry standard remain,” Meta said in a blog post published on Monday.
The 10 platforms the government announced were covered by the ban – Twitch, Kick, YouTube, Threads, Facebook, Instagram, Snap, X, TikTok and Reddit – had all implemented age checks on 10 December 2025.
After the ban was brought in, the office of the eSafety commissioner sent questions to the platforms asking how many accounts had been deactivated but eSafety has yet to release this data. eSafety was approached for comment.
The federal government has said the ban would not be perfect right away, and teens gloated about evading it in replies to the prime minister’s social media accounts after it came into effect.
A Twitch account Guardian Australia set up to test as an under-16s teenager after the ban took effect was last week permanently banned by the platform, citing the policy.
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The federal opposition, which campaigned for the policy before it was adopted by the government, last week said the ban implementation had “fallen flat”.
“Many under-16 accounts have not been deactivated, while others that were initially removed have since become active again,” the shadow communications minister, Melissa McIntosh, said.
“New accounts are being created and the age-verification tools that the government assured Australians would be effective, have proven laughably easy to bypass with some makeup and good lighting.”
McIntosh said children who lost access had migrated to other platforms such as Yope and Lemon8, arguing they were not included in the ban.
The ban requires all platforms to self-assess as to whether the ban should apply to them, and the government indicated it would approach other platforms to seek compliance should teens migrate to those platforms.
Some platforms such as X alternative Bluesky implemented age-assurance despite not being initially named in the list released by the government.
Australia’s social media ban is being closely watched for its success in other parts of the world. The UK Labour government is facing pressure to bring in a similar ban, with the UK Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, stating at the weekend her party would back a ban on social media for under-16s.
Meta on Monday said while it was complying with the ban, it called on the Australian government to engage constructively with industry to “find a better way forward” than a blanket ban for ensuring age-appropriate experiences online.
