Meta, TikTok and Snapchat say they disagree but will comply with Australia’s social media ban

Social media giants Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok said they do not agree with Australia’s new laws restricting children under 16 from making accounts, but that they will respect them.

Jennifer Stout, Australia’s representative for Snapchat’s parent company Snap, told the Australian parliament on Tuesday that the company does not agree with the law because it is “primarily a messaging platform,” which has built-in support for young people.

“We share the government's goal of protecting young people online, but we believe that restricting their ability to communicate on Snapchat will not necessarily achieve that outcome,” Stout said, adding that users under 16 will not be able to access the platform when the rules come into place.

Children under 16 will be unable to create or keep accounts on social media platforms such as Facebook, X, Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube under the new Australian law, coming into force on December 10. Companies that let under-16s create accounts could face still penalties of AU$50 million (€28 million).

A similar message came from Mia Garlick, Meta’s policy director for Australia and New Zealand, who said the company will start to approach the 450,000 under-16 users of Instagram and Facebook.

How parent company Meta will remove these users from its platforms is still under discussion, but will be “consistent with our compliance approach,” Garlick said,

Ella Woods-Joyce, TikTok's public policy lead for Australia, said their roughly 200,000 under-16 users will be given a choice: delete photos and other data along with their accounts or agree to let the company store that information and restore their deactivated accounts when they turn 16.

Woods-Joyce and Stout said their users will have to verify their age through an automated “age assurance mechanism” to get access back to deactivated accounts.

“Where we identify someone who is saying they're 25 but whose behaviours would indicate they're below the age of 16, for example, we will move to make adjustments to their account, and from 10 December we will have those accounts deactivated,” Woods-Joyce added.