Overview
- Australia’s Social Media Minimum Age law, in effect since December 10, requires major platforms to prevent under‑16s from holding accounts and threatens fines up to A$49.5 million for noncompliance.
- The eSafety regulator reported roughly 4.7 million account restrictions across services since the rollout, with no platform‑by‑platform breakdown and early totals understood to include inactive or duplicate accounts.
- Snapchat says it continues to lock more Australian accounts daily as enforcement remains active and ongoing.
- The company warns age‑estimation tools can be off by two to three years, allowing some under‑16s to slip through and wrongly blocking some older teens.
- Snapchat, alongside Meta, is advocating for centralized age verification at the app‑store level and argues an outright ban does not necessarily make teens safer.