Australia’s legislation, effective from December 10, 2025, requires major platforms—including Snapchat, Meta, TikTok, and YouTube—to prevent users under 16 from holding account.
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Web Desk
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Snapchat said it has blocked or disabled more than 415,000 accounts belonging to users under 16 in Australia, as the country enforces its world-first social media ban for minors.
In a statement released on Monday, February 2, 2026, the visual messaging platform said it continues to remove underage accounts daily but cautioned that age-verification technology remains imperfect, allowing some teenagers to slip through the system.
Australia’s legislation, which came into force on December 10, 2025, requires major platforms including Snapchat, Meta, TikTok, and YouTube to prevent under-16s from holding accounts. Companies that fail to take “reasonable steps” to comply face penalties of up to AU$49.5 million (US$34 million).
The country’s eSafety regulator reported last month that tech companies had already blocked 4.7 million underage accounts, calling the results “significant.”
Snapchat, however, said the law contains “serious gaps,” noting that current age-estimation tools are only accurate within two to three years. According to the company, this margin of error means some children under 16 may still gain access, while older teens could be wrongly locked out.
Joining Meta, Snapchat urged Australian authorities to require app stores to verify users’ ages before downloads, arguing that this would provide a more effective and consistent safeguard.
The company also questioned whether an outright ban was the best solution. Snapchat said its platform is mainly used for private communication between friends and family and warned that cutting teenagers off from those connections may not improve their safety or wellbeing.
While acknowledging Australia’s goal of protecting young people online, Snapchat said it does not believe its service should fall under the social media ban. It instead called for a centralized, app-store-level verification system that would make it harder for users to bypass age restrictions.
