From midnight, 10 of the biggest platforms will be required to block Australians aged under 16 years or be fined up to A$49.5m. The law received harsh criticism from major technology companies and free speech advocates, but was praised by parents and child advocates. The rollout closes out a year of speculation about whether a country can block children from using technology that is built into modern life.
And it begins a live experiment that will be studied globally by legislators who want to intervene directly because they are frustrated by what they say is a tech industry that has been too slow to implement effective harm-minimisation efforts. Governments from Denmark to Malaysia — and even some states in the US, where platforms are rolling back trust and safety features — say they plan similar steps, four years after a leak of internal Meta documents showed the company knew its products contributed to body image problems and suicidal thoughts among teenagers, while publicly denying the link existed. “While Australia is the first to adopt such restrictions, it is unlikely to be the last,” said Tama Leaver, a professor of internet studies at Curtin University.
A spokesperson for the British government, which began forcing websites hosting pornographic content to block under-18 users in July, said it was “closely monitoring Australia’s approach to age restrictions”. “When it comes to children’s safety, nothing is off the table,” they added. Few will scrutinise the effects as closely as the Australians.
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The e-safety commissioner, an Australian regulator tasked with enforcing the ban, hired Stanford University and 11 academics to analyse data on thousands of young Australians covered by the ban for at least two years. Though the ban covers 10 platforms initially, including Alphabet’s YouTube, Meta’s Instagram and TikTok, the government has said the list will change as new products appear and young users switch to alternatives. Of the initial 10, all but Elon Musk’s X have said they will comply using age inference — guessing a person’s age from their online activity — or age estimation, which is usually based on a selfie.
They might also check with uploaded identification documents or linked bank account details. Musk has said the ban “seems like a backdoor way to control access to the internet by all Australians” and most platforms have complained that it violates people’s right to free speech. An Australian high court challenge overseen by a libertarian state lawmaker is pending.
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