In just over a month, kids under the age of 16 will be banned from accessing Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X, YouTube, and Kick in Australia.
Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, a governmental agency responsible for overseeing—you guessed it—online safety, says that beginning on December 10, 2025, these platforms “must take reasonable steps to ensure users under 16 do not hold an account.”
Just what those “reasonable steps” are, we aren’t entirely sure yet.
The big question is how these nine platforms will verify users’ ages. It sounds like each will have some leeway in deciding which methods to use, but nobody will be forced to use a government I…
In just over a month, kids under the age of 16 will be banned from accessing Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X, YouTube, and Kick in Australia.
Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, a governmental agency responsible for overseeing—you guessed it—online safety, says that beginning on December 10, 2025, these platforms “must take reasonable steps to ensure users under 16 do not hold an account.”
Just what those “reasonable steps” are, we aren’t entirely sure yet.
The big question is how these nine platforms will verify users’ ages. It sounds like each will have some leeway in deciding which methods to use, but nobody will be forced to use a government ID.
“The Social Media Minimum Age legislation specifically prohibits platforms from compelling Australians to provide a government-issued ID or use an Australian Government accredited digital ID service to prove their age,” says the eSafety Commissioner.
“Platforms may offer it as an option but must also offer a reasonable alternative, so no one who is 16 or older is prevented from having a social media account because they choose not to provide government ID.”
The Commissioner says that the information will be stored safely, but every website that’s ever suffered a breach or misuse of data has said some version of that. Even if the intentions are there, that doesn’t mean that collecting this new data on potentially underage users will go as smoothly as they say it will. The idea of collecting even more of users’ information makes the digital privacy journalist in me clench his whole body.
In contrast to those nine social media platforms affected by the December 10 rules change, the Australian government has specified that certain platforms will *not *be considered “age-restricted social media platforms” and subject to the same age verification rules.
These include Discord, GitHub, LEGO Play, Roblox, Steam and Steam Chat, Google Classroom, Messenger, WhatsApp, and YouTube Kids.
Australia’s government released a website hub for parents, kids, and educators with explanations of how to get ready for the rule implementation on December 10.