Meta has deactivated more than half a million accounts for teenagers across Facebook, Instagram and Threads as a result of Australia’s under-16s social media ban, the company has announced.
According to The Guardian, just over one month since the ban came into effect, Meta announced on Monday that between 4 December, when the company began deactivating accounts, and 11 December, 544,052 accounts Meta believed to be held by users under 16 were deactivated.
That included 330,639 on Instagram, 173,497 on Facebook and 39,916 on Threads.
“Ongoing compliance with the law will be a multi-layered process that we will continue to refine, though our concerns about determining age online without an industry standard remain,” Meta said in a blog post published on Monday.
The 10 platforms the government announced were covered by the ban – Twitch, Kick, YouTube, Threads, Facebook, Instagram, Snap, X, TikTok and Reddit – had all implemented age checks on 10 December 2025.
After the ban was brought in, the office of the eSafety commissioner sent questions to the platforms asking how many accounts had been deactivated but eSafety has yet to release this data. eSafety was approached for comment.
The federal government has said the ban would not be perfect right away, and teens gloated about evading it in replies to the prime minister’s social media accounts after it came into effect.
A Twitch account Guardian Australia set up to test as an under-16s teenager after the ban took effect was last week permanently banned by the platform, citing the policy.
