Australia's Under-16 Social Media Law Is in Effect. Does It Help on a Shared Phone

Australia's social media minimum age law has been fully in effect since 10 December 2025, according to the eSafety Commissioner's own guidance, and it is a real, enforceable restriction, not a proposal still working through parliament. It is also a narrower tool than its name suggests, and knowing exactly what it covers matters more than the headline version of it.

What does the law actually restrict

Accounts, on ten named platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, X, and YouTube, per eSafety's own published guidance. Platforms have to find and deactivate existing under-16 accounts, stop new ones being created, and close off common workarounds. Messaging and gaming services, including WhatsApp, Messenger, and Discord, sit outside it entirely, since the law targets the account-holding platforms it was written for.

Can a parent just give permission instead

No. eSafety's guidance is direct about this: there are no exceptions, and a parent cannot authorize an under-16 account on a restricted platform even with full consent. The law also does not penalize a child for accessing one of these platforms. The obligation sits entirely on the platforms to detect and act, not on the family.

Does this actually stop a child using one of these apps on a shared phone

Not by itself, and this is the part that matters most for a household where a child uses a parent's own phone rather than having an account of their own. The law restricts who can hold an account. It says nothing about what happens when a child opens an app that is already signed in under a parent's own account, because there is no under-16 account there for the platform to detect in the first place. The restriction and the shared-phone reality are solving two different problems.

What is eSafety actually checking for, if not the device

Signals tied to the account itself. eSafety's guidance describes platforms using "various signals, technologies, systems and processes," including age checks at signup and behavioral patterns like language, activity timing, and who an account is connected to, to catch an under-16 person who has their own account. None of that applies to a household's shared adult account being used by more than one person.

So what should an Australian parent actually do

Treat the law as one layer, covering something a device-level tool cannot: a child who tries to sign up for their own account on a major platform. For the separate, more common situation, a child opening an app that is already logged in on a shared phone, the fix sits on the phone itself, not with the platform, by deciding which apps are reachable and when.

The law closed a real gap for under-16s trying to get their own account. It was never built to watch what happens on a phone that already has one.