Meta deleted 756,000 teenage accounts due to the ban on social media for children
Kyiv • UNN
Meta deactivated 756,000 accounts belonging to Australians under 16 on Facebook and Instagram. Australia was the first to introduce a social media ban for children, but more than 80% continued to use them.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, deleted more than 756,000 accounts that the company estimated belonged to Australians under the age of 16. Reuters reports this, UNN writes.
Details
From December 2025 to June 2026, Meta deactivated 462,000 suspicious accounts on Instagram and another 294,000 on Facebook. The company said that the number of blocked profiles would continue to grow as checks were ongoing.
Australia became the first country to introduce a legislative ban on social media use by people under the age of 16. The law came into effect on December 10, 2025.
The authorities explain the restrictions by citing concerns about the impact of social media on children’s physical and mental health. At the same time, the government accuses platforms of insufficient compliance with the new rules.
According to the Australian government and independent studies, more than 80% of children under the age of 16 continued to use social media during the first three months after the ban came into effect.
The Australian regulator may tighten oversight of platforms. The maximum fine for violating the law was increased to 99 million Australian dollars — approximately 69.75 million U.S. dollars.
Representatives of Meta, TikTok, Google, and Snapchat are scheduled to testify in a parliamentary inquiry into the implementation of the ban in Australia.
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