Australia's under-16 social media ban took effect on 10 December 2025. On 31 July 2026, the eSafety Commissioner published the first instalment of a two-year longitudinal study evaluating it, and the findings are more complicated than either side of the debate expected.
If you market to families, to teenagers, or to anyone adjacent to either, this report changes what you can reasonably assume. Here is what it found and what it means.
What the Report Found
The study tracks more than 4,100 children and families over two years. This first instalment compares a national baseline survey taken before the December restrictions against a three-month follow-up conducted between March and April 2026, with 803 children aged 10 to 15 and their parents providing data.
The headline findings:
- Account ownership fell meaningfully. The proportion of under-16s holding a social media account dropped from 52.4% in December to 42.1% in March, a fall of just over 10 percentage points.
- Actual usage barely moved. The proportion using at least one age-restricted platform, with or without an account, went from 85.9% to 81.5%, a reduction of just over four points.
- Frequency was largely unchanged. Around 58% reported using social media daily in March, against roughly 60% beforehand.
- Age assurance mostly did not happen. More than half of the children surveyed said the platform they were still using had not checked their age at all.
- Displacement effects were minimal. The report found little change in sports and physical activity, arts and music, time with friends and family, or community event attendance.
eSafety itself is careful about interpretation, noting that data collected three months in is too early to meaningfully assess whether the policy's intended outcomes have been achieved. That caveat is worth respecting.
The Enforcement Picture
Compliance activity started strongly and then slowed sharply. Platforms removed around 4.7 million accounts held by under-16s shortly after the law commenced. By March, only a further 310,000 or so accounts had been affected.
eSafety has been investigating Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube for potential non-compliance. Penalties reach up to AUD 49.5 million. The platforms eSafety considers age-restricted include Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, X, YouTube, Kick and Reddit, and the rules were amended in March 2026 to add further criteria for what counts as an age-restricted platform.
⚠️ One thing this report is not: it is not an indication that under-16s remain a viable audience because enforcement is patchy. The law targets platforms rather than families, the obligations are tightening rather than loosening, and building a campaign around an audience the platforms are legally required to remove is a compliance and reputational risk with no upside. Treat the residual usage as a finding about enforcement, not as a targeting opportunity.
What Actually Changed for Media Plans
The reliable mechanism is gone even though the audience has not entirely left. Before the ban, an estimated 624,000 Australians aged 14 and 15 were active on social platforms, and logged-in social targeting was a central pillar of youth-focused media plans. That pillar cannot be relied on now, regardless of how many accounts slipped through age checks, because you cannot build a defensible plan on a cohort that platforms are obliged to be removing and regulators are actively investigating.
What we have seen budgets do instead:
- Move toward the household. Connected TV has become the obvious beneficiary, since it reaches families in a shared context without depending on logged-in individual targeting.
- Shift from audience targeting to context. Contextual placement, gaming environments and premium publisher inventory reach attention without profiling individuals.
- Reframe toward parents. For most categories aimed at younger people, the practical move is to market to the person holding the payment method. Search demand from parents and coaches researching on behalf of children is often underexploited, and our local SEO guide is a reasonable place to start if that demand is geographically concentrated.
- Lean on first-party channels. Email, schools and community club partnerships have all absorbed spend that previously went to social. Our guide to building an email list covers the fundamentals.
What This Means If You Market on Social Generally
Two flow-on effects are worth planning around even if under-16s were never your audience.
First, age assurance is becoming ambient. Platforms under investigation will tighten verification, and tightened verification adds friction for everyone. Expect some erosion in addressable reach and some degradation in audience signal quality as a consequence.
Second, the regulatory direction is broader than this one law. Australia's Privacy Act reforms brought new enforcement powers for the OAIC, approval to establish a Children's Online Privacy Code, and transparency requirements around automated decisions. The trajectory is away from notice-and-consent and toward design mandates and access restrictions. Plans built on granular behavioural targeting have more regulatory exposure than plans built on context and consent.
If organic social is a meaningful channel for you, this compounds a trend that was already well underway. Our analysis of declining organic reach covers the structural side, and our social strategy fundamentals hold up reasonably well in a lower-reach, lower-signal environment. For platform-specific implications, TikTok marketing in Australia and Instagram marketing for business are both worth revisiting with an older audience assumption baked in.
The Bottom Line
Account ownership among under-16s fell by ten points in three months, but four in five are still accessing platforms, mostly because age assurance was not implemented effectively. eSafety says it is too early to judge outcomes, and it is right about that.
For marketers the conclusion is nonetheless clear enough. Logged-in youth targeting is not a channel you can plan around any more, verification friction is going to increase for every audience, and the durable strategies are contextual reach, parent-directed messaging and first-party channels you own. Around 25 other countries are reportedly examining Australia's model, so this is worth understanding properly rather than treating as a local curiosity.
Nauman has spent more than 15 years in digital marketing across Australia, the UAE and Pakistan, working in-house and agency-side before founding DigiWolf. He holds an MBA in Finance & Marketing from the Institute of Business Administration, and works directly with every DigiWolf client on AI search, SEO and paid media strategy.