Government Age Verification System - Congressional Research Service

The Congressional Research Service reported in July 2026 that three months after Australia's law banning individuals under the age of 16 from using certain social media platforms went into effect, Australia's eSafety commissioner released a compliance report showing platforms removed or restricted access for 4.7 million accounts based on age and prevented individuals under 16 from creating more than 300,000 additional accounts. The CRS analysis noted that some sections of the KIDS Act passed by the House on June 29, 2026 state that provisions should not be construed to require operators to implement age verification, but that website operators might respond by implementing changes for all users, implementing changes for individuals identified as minors even without a verification requirement, no longer offering certain services, or no longer offering the entire website in the United States.

Australia's enforcement data illustrates the structural limits of age-gating approaches. Millions of accounts restricted and hundreds of thousands of sign-ups prevented represent compliance activity, but the measure does not address what happens when a child does access a platform, whether through circumvention or because the platform allows supervised access. It also displaces risk to channels outside the regulatory perimeter. A Meta Business Partner, Guardii addresses harm rather than access, detecting grooming, sextortion, child sexual abuse material, age-inappropriate contact and cyberbullying in direct-message conversations on Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox and other platforms, blocking hostile contact before it reaches the target, and surfacing a child in crisis to a parent, school or professional with the authority to intervene, without restricting compliant users or imposing the privacy cost of requiring every adult to verify their identity.