Banning Kids From Social Media Sounds Simple. Actually Doing It Is Not.

Key points

• Australia's Online Safety Amendment Bill set a minimum age of 16 for social media; the ban took effect in December 2025.
• Early in 2025, the Australian government doubled its maximum penalty for breaching that law to $99 million.
• The United Kingdom announced plans to ban users aged 16 and under from social media platforms and gaming sites.
• U.S. Senator Brian Schatz introduced the Kids Off Social Media Act in 2025, which would bar children under 13 from having accounts; the bill is still moving through Congress.
• One platform under Australia's rules contacted users who had already declared they were under 16, raising immediate questions about whether the age-check was genuine.

The premise seems straightforward: if social media harms children, stop children from using it. Australia tried first. Canada followed, then the United Kingdom. Several U.S. States, California and New York among them, passed their own rules without waiting for federal action. The platforms in scope include TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.

But a premise and a working law are very different things.

How do you actually stop a teenager from lying about their age?

You cannot, at least not easily. The only reliable method is to make users prove their age with real documents, a driving licence or a credit card. That creates a new problem at once: companies must now collect sensitive personal data they never wanted, and users feel suspicious about handing it over.

"It's a really fine line to walk about how you're approaching what data you're collecting, what you're using to verify, and what you're retaining," Joe Kaufmann, global head of privacy and data protection at identity-verification company Jumio, told Dark Reading.

Australia's eSafety commissioner flagged early trouble after the December 2025 rollout. One unnamed platform reached out to age-restricted users who had declared themselves under 16, claiming it was offering them a chance to correct an error. The regulator noted dryly that children would obviously use that opening to lie. Facial age-estimation software drew separate criticism for its error rate.

Then there is the business problem. Platforms do not want to lose adult users snagged in clunky checks. Every extra verification step drives people away. Kaufmann describes companies rolling out changes that cause users real "discomfort" without keeping determined teenagers out.

Richard Bird, chief strategy officer at AI-governance firm Singulr AI, argues the framing is wrong from the start. "Social media platforms have refused to make meaningful progress on protecting children," he told Dark Reading. "It's a faulty product causing real human damage. When a product causes that kind of damage, regulation follows."

Bird prefers "age controls" over "bans". Driving ages and drinking ages are both age controls; nobody considers them unusual. The mechanics for digital platforms are newer, but the concept is not.

We covered Australia's pattern of digital-privacy friction in our 3 July report on Australians' online safety and the story keeps adding chapters.

For organisations that have to comply, Kaufmann offers two concrete priorities. Collect only the minimum data needed to confirm an age. Use it only for that purpose and delete it afterward. Transparency on both points, he says, separates a process people tolerate from one that triggers backlash.

Apple is building an age-verification tool into its operating system that could let apps confirm an age bracket without seeing the underlying documents. That kind of privacy-preserving design is where this is heading, whether platforms welcome it or not.

Should you worry?

The enforcement gap is the real story here. Legislators are moving fast, fines are steep, and the technical means to verify age without hoovering up personal data are only just arriving. Until those tools mature, determined teenagers will keep finding gaps and companies will keep absorbing compliance costs without delivering the protection the laws promise.