Meta urges Australia to rethink ‘blanket’ social media ban for teens

Meta has issued new pleas to the Australian government to reconsider its recently enforced social media ban for under 16s, after the tech giant blocked over half a million accounts on its platforms in one month.

Australia’s Online Safety Amendment Act 2024 came into effect on Dec. 11, barring access to 10 major services including Meta’s Instagram,  Alphabet‘s YouTube, Bytedance’s TikTok, Reddit, Snapchat, and Elon Musk’s X.

Meta has since removed nearly 550,000 accounts believed to belong to under-16s between Dec. 4-11, it said in a blog post on Sunday. On Instagram, it removed around 330,000 accounts, around 173,500 on Facebook, and nearly 40,000 on Threads.

“As we’ve stated previously, Meta is committed to meeting its compliance obligations and is taking the necessary steps to remain compliant with the law,” Meta said in the post.

“That said, we call on the Australian government to engage with industry constructively to find a better way forward, such as incentivising all of industry to raise the standard in providing safe, privacy-preserving, age appropriate experiences online, instead of blanket bans.”

The company said it worked with OpenAge Initiative, a non profit organization, to launch age verification tolls called Age Keys — users can then verify their age via government-issued ID, financial information, face estimation, or national digital wallets.

However, it highlighted that age verification and parental approval needs to extend to the app store level, as teens use over 40 apps a week and many of these don’t use age verification tools or prioritize safety, or be in the scope of the Australian law.

“This is the only way to guarantee consistent, industry-wide protections for young people, no matter which apps they use, and to avoid the whack-a-mole effect of catching up with new apps that teens will migrate to in order to circumvent the social media ban law,” it added.

Meta previously shared its disapproval of the new law saying “cutting teens off from their friends and communities isn’t the answer,” and emphasized that some will will find other ways to access social media sites “without the safeguards provided to registered users.”

Since the ban, many Australian teens have found ways to circumvent the law including turning to alternative social media platforms that are not yet banned including Snapchat-alternative Yope, Bytedance’s video and photo-sharing app Lemon8, and messaging platform Discord.

Additionally, other under 16s told Sky News that they’re using VPNs or their parent’s social media account.

Meta is not the only platform to question the ban. Reddit has gone as far as to launch a legal challenge against Australia saying the new law is ineffective and limits political discussion. It can…