Australia’s under-16 social media rules: what parents actually need to do

Since 10 December 2025, age-restricted social media platforms must take reasonable steps to stop Australians under 16 from creating or keeping an account. The duty sits on the platforms, not on families: an under-16 with an account is not breaking the law, and no fine can be issued to them or to you. The list of restricted services is narrower than most parents assume.

What the rules actually require

The obligation is on the platform, not the household. From 10 December 2025, an age-restricted social media platform has to take reasonable steps to find and remove or deactivate accounts held by under-16s, and to stop new ones being created. Enforcement runs through civil penalties against companies, with court-imposed fines of up to 150,000 penalty units for a corporation — currently around A$54.6 million.

Nothing in the scheme creates an offence for a child or a parent. That single fact resolves most of the anxiety parents brought to this, and it also creates the scam described further down.

Which platforms are restricted

eSafety names these as age-restricted: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, X, YouTube, Kick and Reddit.

Several services have self-assessed as age-restricted, including BigoLive, BlueSky, Lemon8, Wizz and Yubo. Match services such as Tinder, Hinge, OKCupid, Plenty of Fish, Match.com and Azar have indicated they meet the conditions, and will continue to enforce a minimum age of 18 regardless.

Which platforms are not restricted — the part parents get wrong

Services eSafety considers do not currently meet the criteria include Discord, GitHub, Google Classroom, LEGO Play, Messenger, Pinterest, Roblox, Steam and Steam Chat, WhatsApp and YouTube Kids.

Read that list again if your mental model of this law was “my 14-year-old is off social media now”. Messenger and WhatsApp are untouched, so private messaging continues exactly as before. Discord and Roblox are untouched, and between them they carry most of the stranger-contact risk that parents actually worry about. A household that treats December 2025 as the day the problem was solved has moved its child from ten supervised-ish feeds onto four unrestricted ones.

The practical read: this law removed a set of public feeds. It did not remove chat, gaming, or the places grooming most often starts. The settings on those services matter more now, not less — see our Discord, Roblox and WhatsApp guides.

What happens to an account your child already has

• If a platform believes an account is held by an under-16, it may be removed or deactivated. That applies even to accounts that earn money.
• Platforms are expected to run a review process so that an account restricted by mistake can be corrected, and to give clear instructions for requesting that review.
• Before an account goes, it is worth downloading anything your child would be upset to lose. Most platforms offer a data export, and doing it calmly in advance beats doing it after the account has gone.

What the rules do not fix

• It does not filter content on the services that remain, and it sets no rules about screen time.
• It does not touch private messaging, gaming chat, or any service on the not-restricted list.
• It does not change what your child sees when they use a parent’s account, or an account registered with a false birth date, which is the obvious workaround and worth naming out loud rather than pretending it does not exist.
• The list of restricted services is maintained by eSafety and changes over time. Anything here is accurate as at the review date on this page; check eSafety’s own list before relying on it.

If your family is outside Australia, our regional differences guide covers how account region changes the defaults your child gets.