Late last year, Australia implemented a social media ban for those aged under 16, and reports since suggest that things aren’t exactly going as planned. For one, companies reportedly don’t seem to be actually checking some accounts.
Reuters spoke to a team of software testers, who report that several companies failed to ask for proof of age on any of the 50 accounts they opened after the ban rolled out.
The team behind the accounts set their age as 16, but nine of the ten services the testers attempted to use reportedly failed to check their age in any way. This includes Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube. Kick, the streaming platform, reportedly did ask for proof of age in order to let users make accounts.
In an extreme case, one profile claiming to be 16 on X was reportedly served pornographic content. Reuters reports it was told by a Meta spokesperson that the test accounts weren’t checked as it wasn’t clear if they had “posted content or engaged in a way a true under-16-year-old user would”. In other words, it may not have been clear through account history and usage whether they were the claimed age.