Australia’s ban on social media accounts for under-16s has reduced account ownership but has so far had only a limited effect on children’s overall use of social platforms. The early findings matter because other countries are considering similar restrictions, while the data suggests that age checks are easily bypassed and many services remain accessible without an account.

Three months after the rules began, the share of under-16s with accounts on restricted platforms fell from 52.4% to 42.1%, yet 81.5% still accessed such services, only 4.4 percentage points lower than before. YouTube remained especially widespread, used by 73.6% of 10-to-15-year-olds in the previous four weeks, while use of unrestricted platforms such as Pinterest rose from 16.6% to 21.8%; the regulator is following more than 4,100 children and families over two years.