Australia Prepares to Sue Meta, TikTok, Snap and YouTube Over Under-16 Social Media Ban

Australia expects to take Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube to court for failing to keep children under 16 off their services, Communications Minister Anika Wells said in an interview with Bloomberg in Sydney on 19 October 2026. No case has been filed yet.

Wells said eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant is using expanded investigative powers to build a case for the Federal Court, according to the Bloomberg report carried by The Star. Those powers include demanding documents and summoning current or former employees for questioning.

What the law requires

Australia's social media minimum age law took effect on 10 December 2025. It requires covered platforms to take reasonable steps to stop under-16s from creating or keeping accounts. The maximum penalty for breaches has been doubled to A$109.2 million, Bloomberg reported.

The regulator opened investigations into the five services in March 2026. A July eSafety report found that most under-16s who had accounts before the ban either kept them or opened new ones, largely because age checks did not work well. The share of under-16s holding accounts fell from 52.4% to 42.1% over the assessment period, BestMediaInfo reported.

"The law is not failing – platforms are failing to comply with the law," Wells said in a 15 October speech at the National Press Club.

What the platforms say

The companies say they are complying, The Next Web reported. Meta said in August that it had removed access to more than 750,000 Facebook and Instagram accounts in Australia it judged to belong to under-16s, and has argued that age checks should happen once, at the phone's operating system or app store.

Meta and the eSafety office had no immediate comment on the minister's remarks, and Snap, TikTok and Google did not immediately respond, according to Bloomberg.

Why India is watching

Wells is also pushing a Digital Duty of Care bill that would require services to protect under-18s and let users switch off algorithmic feeds, and says she is working with countries including the UK, Canada and Malaysia on similar rules.

In India, the Supreme Court has sought the Centre's reply on a plea for age verification and age limits on children's social media accounts, with a hearing set for 7 December. MeitY has separately asked Meta to review its recommendation systems. An Australian court ruling on what counts as "reasonable steps" would give regulators and platforms here a concrete benchmark.