Meta has shut down 756,000 Facebook and Instagram accounts to keep users under the age of 16 off social media in Australia. The accounts were closed between December last year and June this year. According to figures released by Meta, they include 462,000 Instagram accounts and 294,000 Facebook accounts.
Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, gave the information in a statement issued on Thursday.
Australia’s ban on social-media use by those under 16 took effect on 10 December — the first law of its kind in the world.
Under the law, social-media companies must take “reasonable steps” to close the accounts of Australians under 16.
According to Meta’s figures, the largest share of the closures came in the first month after the ban took effect. In the month from December to January, 331,000 Instagram and 173,000 Facebook accounts were closed. More accounts were closed in the following months, taking the total to 756,000 by June.
Meta said the accounts that were closed were ones the company suspected belonged to under-16 Australians.
Meta has opposed the Australian law from the outset. But the company said that, despite its differences with the law, it was committed to complying with Australian law. It is using various technologies to detect age, including analysing the information in users’ profiles, and restrictions are also being imposed on opening new accounts by those who do not meet the age threshold.
Even though Meta has closed such a large number of accounts, there are questions over whether social-media use by under-16s in Australia has been stopped completely. Australian government figures and several independent studies have found that, even in the first three months after the ban took effect, more than 8 in 10 under-16s were still using social media.
Australia’s internet regulator is therefore considering tougher steps over the role of various platforms in complying with the law, and action against Meta and several other tech companies is also under consideration. Next Friday, an Australian parliamentary inquiry is due to hear from tech firms including Meta, TikTok, Snap and Google.
Australia’s eSafety Commissioner has said that, by the middle of December 2025, access had been removed from more than 4.7 million under-16 accounts across the various age-covered platforms in the country. But apart from Facebook and Instagram, none of the other platforms has published detailed account-closure figures for the same period as Meta.
Overall, the Australian law has become a major test of controlling children’s and adolescents’ access to social media. Meta’s figure of 756,000 closed accounts shows that, although a big step has been taken to implement the law, keeping under-16s entirely away from social media remains a major challenge.
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