eSafety Commissar Bullies Social Media Platforms

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, recently directed social media companies to take steps to prevent children from altering or falsifying their age to bypass upcoming restrictions for users under 16. This directive is part of the broader implementation of the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024, which requires platforms to enforce age verification and block underage users starting December 10, 2025.

The Commissioner stressed that platforms must identify and remove existing underage accounts (84% of children aged 8 to 12 already use social media, often with parental assistance) and implement "reasonable steps" to prevent new sign-ups or age changes by minors.

This will include multi-layered age assurance technologies, such as facial age estimation, behavioural inference and successive validation - to detect and block attempts by children to lie about their age, or edit profiles post-creation, without relying solely on self-reported birthdates, which can be easily manipulated.

Non-compliance may result in fines of up to AUD 49.5 million per violation, as platforms such as Meta (Facebook and Instagram), TikTok, Snapchat, and others were explicitly required to audit their user bases and redesign onboarding processes to close existing loopholes.

The guidance builds on earlier research from September 2024 showing that only 13% of underage accounts were previously shut down for age violations, highlighting the need to stop children from "changing their age" on profiles to evade detection.

This aligns with the law’s goal to stop social media access until age 16 in order to "protect young users from harms such as cyberbullying and addictive platform features", while exemptions will apply for non-social platforms like gaming and messaging apps.