National

Social media ban a 'success' with 4.7m accounts blocked

Jan 16, 2026

a woman checking her phone outside Parliament House — The mass exodus of Australian children from social media has been hailed as a positive step. -AAP Image

All 10 companies covered by Australia's social media laws are complying with bans on children accessing their apps, with almost five million accounts blocked or restricted under the world-first rules.

Hold tight - we’re checking permissions before loading more content

Federal government data, released on Friday, shows the bans are having a significant impact, but the eSafety Commission has declined to release details on how many people have been removed from each platform.

Under laws which took effect on December 10, platforms including Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, Snapchat and YouTube need to take reasonable steps to ensure children under 16 don't hold accounts.

By December 12, 4.7 million accounts had been shut down, suspended or restricted, the government said.

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said some children had found ways around the rules, but the restrictions were still worthwhile.

"We don't expect safety laws to eliminate every single breach," she told reporters in Brisbane on Friday.

"If we did, speed limits would have failed, because people speed. Drinking limits would have failed because, believe it or not, some kids do get access to alcohol.

"We're preventing predatory social media companies from accessing our children."

Pressed on why she wouldn't release more granular data about the ban's effectiveness, the eSafety commissioner said she didn't want to impact any ongoing investigations.

"Think of this as like a law enforcement investigation. You don't share evidence when you have active regulatory investigations," Ms Inman Grant said.

eSafety was also working closely with tech platforms to ensure their age verification systems were calibrated correctly and people weren't being banned unfairly, or allowed in when they shouldn't be, Ms Inman Grant added.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the ban was a "source of Australian pride" and claimed parents and children had written to the government supporting the laws.

"There's a lot of younger people that I've spoken to who speak about, gee, we wish that was in place when I was 13 or 14. It's making a difference to my younger brother or sister," Mr Albanese said.

Australia is the first country to take such a step, inspiring other nations - including the UK, Malaysia and New Zealand - to consider similar age restrictions.

While some teenagers have managed to bypass the age limits, the data shows a large number have already been booted off platforms.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, this week said it had taken down more than half a million Australian user accounts before the ban.

Meta said between December 4 and 11, it took down 330,639 Instagram accounts, 173,497 Facebook accounts and 39,916 Threads accounts it believed belonged to people younger than 16.