Australia Ready to Drag Social Media Giants to Court, Ban Children Under 16 Years Old Actually Broke?

JAKARTA - The Australian government is starting to lose patience. Three months after the ban on the use of social media for children under 16 years of age was imposed, gaps have emerged. In fact, it has led to threats of legal action against global technology giants.

Australian Communications Minister Anika Wells has publicly stated that the government is preparing serious legal steps. Evidence of alleged violations is being collected so that regulators can take the case to federal court.

"We've spent the summer building a body of evidence... about how kids can still game the system," Wells told reporters in Canberra.

This step is a strong signal that the soft approach previously taken by the government is now changing into an aggressive law enforcement strategy.

Big Platforms Under Investigation

Australia's internet watchdog, the eSafety Commissioner, confirmed it was investigating a number of major platforms, including Meta with its Instagram and Facebook services, then Google via YouTube, as well as Snapchat and TikTok.

Regulators found strong indications that the platforms had not fully complied with the new rules. In the first compliance report since the rules came into force last December, there were major gaps in the age verification system.

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant confirmed that her party is now preparing to take firm action. "We are now moving towards the enforcement phase," she said.

A number of findings show that age verification practices are still weak. Children can try many times to pass the age test, while some platforms do not even implement age estimation technology based on digital activities. In many cases, users simply claim to be 16 years old to create an account without further verification.

More worrying, the reporting mechanism for underage accounts is considered ineffective. In fact, some platforms only check the age when users try to change data, not during the initial registration.

Regulator data shows almost a third of parents in Australia admit their children under 16 still have social media accounts after the ban came into effect. Of those, two-thirds said the platform never asked their child's age.

This situation is a major blow to the initial claims of the technology industry, which had previously said it had disabled around 4.7 million accounts suspected of belonging to underage users.

However, the response of technology companies tends to be defensive. Meta and Snap said they were committed to complying with the rules, while Meta highlighted the "natural margin of error" in age verification technology around the 16-year-old age limit. TikTok chose not to comment, while Google has not given an official response.

Under Australian law, social media companies can be fined up to 49.5 million Australian dollars per violation if they are found to have not taken "reasonable" steps to prevent underage users.

Australia's move is now in the global spotlight. A number of countries are beginning to observe whether this regulatory model is effective in reducing risks such as digital bullying to body image pressure often experienced by teenagers on social media.

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