Australian under-16s' social media use climbs back toward pre-ban levels, data shows

Australia's under-16 social media ban, which came into force in December, initially did what its designers intended: children's activity on the major platforms fell. That dip now looks temporary. According to France24, data from parental control company Qustodio shows usage among Australian minors climbing again in the months since, with some apps closing in on the levels recorded before the law took effect.

The numbers behind the rebound

Qustodio's figures are drawn from anonymised monthly app usage among Australian children, with a user counted as active if they spent more than five consecutive minutes in an app at least once in a given month.

On that measure, TikTok remains widely used despite the ban. Some 25.9 percent of 13- to 15-year-olds were still on the app, just over a percentage point below the pre-ban figure. Among 10- to 12-year-olds, TikTok use was a mere 0.06 percentage points short of where it stood before the restrictions began. Use of Instagram and Snapchat was also rising in both age groups, Qustodio said.

Workarounds or enforcement gaps

Yasmin London, Qustodio's global online safety expert, offered France24 several possible explanations. Children may be hiding their location with VPNs, or entering a false date of birth at sign-up. "But it could really be as simple as they're just accessing these apps because the restrictions aren't working," she said.

The data also captures a drift toward services the law does not reach: children are increasingly using WhatsApp, the messaging platform that sits outside the ban's scope.

Australian officials have framed the law as child protection, citing online bullying and what they describe as "predatory algorithms" as the harms it targets. Independent research has been less encouraging: a peer-reviewed study by Australia-based researchers, published in June, found little evidence that teenagers had abandoned social media because of the ban.

Other countries are lining up

Australia's experiment is being watched closely. According to France24, the UK, France and others are moving to follow suit with their own curbs on minors' access. New Zealand's government said this week that it will introduce legislation under which firms such as Meta could be fined up to 10 percent of their global revenue for failing to comply.

Why it matters

The Australian figures are an early, real-world test of whether age-based social media bans actually change behaviour, and the initial answer is not reassuring. Within months of the law taking effect, usage among the youngest cohort is back to within a rounding error of pre-ban levels on at least one major platform.

For lawmakers in the UK, France and New Zealand, the lesson is that passing the law is the easy part. Making it bite appears to require age checks that children cannot sidestep with a VPN or a fake birthday, penalties large enough to matter, and a clear line around which services are covered. The WhatsApp shift points to a further substitution risk: restricting one set of apps can simply push minors onto services outside the rules.

There are caveats to the data. Qustodio sells parental control software rather than running a neutral measurement programme, and its activity threshold, five consecutive minutes in an app once a month, is a low bar. Even so, its direction of travel matches the June peer-reviewed study, and it arrives just as several governments commit to copying the Australian model.