Following Australia's outright prohibition on social media accounts for individuals under sixteen that officially came into force, the data suggested, at first sight, an unqualified triumph. Within a matter of weeks, some major platforms covered by the law removed approximately 4.7 million underage profiles. This showed a scale of exclusion no other nation had previously matched.

However, scrutinising those initial numbers reveals a far more chaotic reality. A study undertaken three months into the enforcement discovered that roughly 80% of Australian teenagers under sixteen continued to access platforms they were technically barred from. It emerges that age verification is surprisingly simple to circumvent; almost 20% of underage users created a fictitious profile to mask their identity and roughly 10% used private browsing to evade detection. Most faced some form of age check – usually just entering a birthdate or uploading a selfie – and overcame it without difficulty.

Opponents have seized on these troubling revelations. Some have described the legislation as a band-aid solution, arguing it only drives teenage engagement underground instead of tackling the addictive features that draw young users in to begin with. An online thread has voiced a distinct objection, maintaining that the rule overreaches, infringes on privacy and free speech, and wrongly lumps an online discussion forum in with standard social media.

In lieu of re-evaluating the policy, the Australian government has reinforced its firm stance, doubling the maximum penalty and threatening to sue five platforms it accuses of engineering noncompliance. Whether heavier fines can achieve what age verification alone could not remains an open issue. Policymakers in other countries, also considering comparable measures, are observing very intently, knowing that a failure could undermine their respective efforts.

(Adapted from https://www.brookings.edu/)