Meta has started removing Australian children under 16 years old from its Instagram, Facebook and Threads platforms, a week before an official teen social media ban begins.

The tech giant announced last month it had begun notifying users aged between 13 to 15 years old that their accounts would start being shut down from 4 December.

An estimated 150,000 Facebook users and 350,000 Instagram accounts are expected to be affected. Threads, similar to X, can only be accessed via an Instagram account.

Australia’s world-first social media ban starts on 10 December, with companies facing fines of up to A$49.5m (US$33m, £25m) if they fail to take “reasonable steps” to stop under-16s from having accounts.

A spokesperson for Meta told the BBC on Thursday that “compliance with the law will be an ongoing and multi-layered process”.

“While Meta is committed to complying with the law, we believe a more effective, standardised, and privacy-preserving approach is needed,” she said.

The government should require app stores to verify the age of users when they download apps and ask for parental approval for under-16s, Meta said, as this would eliminate the need for teens to verify their age across different apps.

Last month, Meta said users it had identified as under 16 would be able to download and save their posts, videos and messages before their accounts are deactivated.

Teens who believe they have been wrongly categorised as under 16 can ask for a review and submit a “video selfie” to verify their age. They can also provide a driver’s licence or a government-issued identification.

Alongside Meta’s three platforms, the other social media sites affected by the ban are YouTube, X, TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit, Kick and Twitch.

The government says the ban is aimed at protecting children from the harms of social media but critics say the move may isolate certain groups who depend on platforms for connection and push children to less-regulated corners of the internet.

Communications Minister Anika Wells on Wednesday said she expected teething problems in the first few days and weeks of the ban but it was about protecting Gen Alpha - anyone under 15 years - and future generations.

“With one law, we can protect Generation Alpha from being sucked into purgatory by the predatory algorithms described by the man who created the feature as behavioural cocaine,” Wells said.

She described youngsters as being connected to a “dopamine drip” from the moment they got a smartphone and social media accounts.

Wells also said that she was closely watching lesser-known apps like Lemon8 - created by the makers behind TikTok - and Yope to see if children were migrating to those platforms after the ban.

Earlier this week, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant wrote to Lemon8 and Yope - both are video and photo-sharing apps - asking them to self-assess if they fell under the ban.

Yope’s chief executive and co-founder Bahram Ismailau said the start-up had not received any inquiries from Inman Grant yet but had already carried out a self-assessment and found it was not a social media platform.

“Because in practice Yope functions as a fully private messenger with no public content at all,” he told the BBC.

Yope works much like WhatsApp, Mr Ismailau said, where it’s about “seeing your people every day and sharing your life with them safely and privately”.

Lemon8 has reportedly said it will exclude under-16s from its platform from next week, despite not being included in the ban.
YouTube, which was originally exempt from the ban but then later included, labelled the law as “rushed” and claimed that banning children from having an account - which comes with parental controls - will make its video-sharing platform “less safe”.

Australia’s social media ban, the first of its kind in the world, is being closely watched by global leaders.

The government commissioned a study earlier this year which found that 96% of Australian children aged 10-15 used social media, and that seven out of 10 of them had been exposed to harmful content such as misogynistic and violent material as well as content promoting eating disorders and suicide.

One in seven also reported experiencing grooming-type behaviour from adults or older children, and more than half said they had been the victim of cyberbullying.

Source: BBC

--Agencies