Dec. 4 (UPI) — Meta began removing Australian teens younger than 16 from its platforms on Thursday to comply with the country’s new law.
Australia recently implemented the law that bans children from all social media until they turn 16. The ban takes effect on Dec. 10, but Meta began shutting down the Facebook and Instagram accounts and blocking new under-16 users on Thursday.
The ban also affects TikTok, YouTube, X, Snapchat, Kick and Reddit.
There are about 150,000 Facebook accounts and 350,000 Instagram accounts in Australia owned by kids between 13 and 15 years old, the eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said in February.
“While we are working hard to remove all users who we understand to be under the age of 16 by Dec. 10, compliance with the law will be an ongoing and multilayered process,” a Meta spokesperson said. “If you’re under 16, you can still preserve and download your digital history across Instagram, Threads, and Facebook. Before you turn 16, we will notify you that you will soon be allowed to regain access to these platforms, and your content will be restored exactly as you left it.”
Two teens, backed by the Digital Freedom Project, are fighting the social media ban in the Australian Supreme Court.
Digital Freedom Project president John Ruddick said the ban was disproportionate and placed parental responsibility on the government and “unelected bureaucrats.”
Communications Minister Anika Wells said the ban will be good for kids and young teens.
“With one law, we can protect Generation Alpha from being sucked into purgatory by the predatory algorithms described by the man who created the feature as behavioural cocaine,” the BBC reported Wells said.
She also said she was looking at lesser-known apps like Lemon8 and Yope to see if young teens were moving to those platforms.
Grant recently wrote to Lemon8 and Yope asking them to self-assess if they fell under the ban.
Yope CEO and co-founder Bahram Ismailau said he hadn’t gotten any inquiry yet, but the team had already self-assessed and found it didn’t fit because it isn’t a social media platform.
“Because in practice Yope functions as a fully private messenger with no public content at all,” he told the BBC.