Four in five under-16s in Australia using social media despite ban, study shows | Social media

More than 80 per cent of under-16s in Australia said they were still using social media three months after the law banning them came into force. research shows.

Australia became the first country to ban children’s social media. Since December 2025, those under the age of 16 have been banned from having accounts on many social media platforms, including TikTok, X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat.

But an observational study of 408 people aged 12 to 17 by the country’s University of Newcastle concluded that Australia’s social media minimum age legislation resulted in “limited enforcement, incomplete compliance and significant circumvention of social media restrictions.”

“In general, exposure to action [of parliament] There was a significant early impact on social media use among adolescents under 16, the authors added.

The findings have implications for a growing number of countries that are in the process of implementing their own bans. The UK’s social media ban, set to come into force in 2027, will prevent under-16s from accessing Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, X and Facebook, and from livestreaming or communicating with strangers on gaming sites such as Roblox.

But experts and campaigners say the research, published in the BMJ, shows banning social media is not enough to stop children accessing harmful content online and a more “persuasive strategy is needed”.

Research conducted in Australia found a minimal decrease in daily social media use three months after the ban. One of the key factors why young people continued to use banned social platforms was inadequate age verification checks. Approximately 85 percent of young people said that they still use social media three months after the ban, and more than half said that they use their own accounts.

Although two-thirds of young people surveyed said they were required to complete age verification checks, only 5% of young people aged 12-13 and 11% of young people aged 14-15 had to provide an official ID photo. The two most common checks were asking teens their age and uploading a selfie.

A significant minority of respondents said they actively bypassed age restrictions. About 15% of 12-13 year olds and 19% of 14-15 year olds surveyed said they used a fake account, and about 3% said they used a VPN.

The study concluded that an Australian social media ban may be more effective in preventing or delaying access to social media by children under the age of eight, rather than restricting access by adolescents who already use it.

Andy Burrows, chief executive of the Molly Rose Foundation in the UK, said the findings showed social media bans alone did not keep under-16s off restricted platforms or reduce the time young people spent using high-risk sites. “Unless ministers have a coherent plan to urgently learn lessons, the UK ban will unravel in the same way. Parents will be left with false hope and a false perception of their children’s safety.”

“The next prime minister should enter Downing Street with a convincing strategy to properly protect children from online harm, rather than relying on performance bans, which are unlikely to improve the mental health and wellbeing of our young people, as this research suggests.”

Rachel de Souza, England’s children’s commissioner, said: “A ban should not be seen as a silver bullet. We should go further and ban access to all online services (not just social media platforms) that use harmful features and functionality to all children, not just those under 16.”

Prof Dennis Ougrin, consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist at Queen Mary University of London, said the study should serve as “an important early reality check for policymakers” but that it was “too early to conclude that the policy has failed”. “The question is not just whether use is falling, but whether restrictions are improving outcomes such as mental health, sleep, exposure to harmful content, and self-harm.”

A UK government spokesman said: “Our approach goes beyond the Australian model and will be supported by stronger, more effective age verification checks to make it much harder for children to bypass security measures.

“As the technology secretary has made clear, this ban is as much about helping future generations as it is about young people today and resetting social norms in the future.”