None of 50 test social media accounts declaring an age of 16 were asked to prove their age, according to a previously unreported study that exposes a gap in the first line of defence behind Australia’s ban on social media access for children under 16.
The accounts were created by KJR, an Australian testing firm that advised the government on the rollout of the ban and had previously trialled age-assurance software on more than 1,000 Australians. The 50 accounts, opened after the law took effect and declared as belonging to 16-year-olds, were spread across nine of the 10 platforms subject to the restrictions, including Meta, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube and X, KJR director Andrew Hammond told Reuters. Only one platform, Australian live-streaming service Kick, refused to let a user create an account without proof of age.
The finding points to a gap in the initial vetting stage of Australia’s age-assurance approach, which relies on inferring a user’s likely age range from their general online activity rather than requiring upfront identification. That inference step does not appear to be flagging young users for further verification, according to the study. Some of the dummy accounts received advertisements for youth banking products, an indication platforms had registered the accounts as belonging to a younger age range, Hammond said. One account that signed up to X declaring an age of 16 was served pornographic content, he said.
“You should be asked to demonstrate how old you are, and not once have we been asked to verify our age or use age-assurance measures,” Hammond said.
A Meta spokesperson said the shadow trial appeared inconsistent with regulator guidance, which calls for escalating to formal age verification when behavioral indicators suggest a user may be underage or when an account is reported, and noted it was unclear whether the dummy accounts behaved the way a genuine under-16 user would. A Kick spokesperson said it would not be feasible for the platform to rely on age inference given it was too new to have accumulated the behavioral data needed to estimate user ages. A spokesperson for the eSafety Commissioner said the regulator remained confident that age-restricted platforms had the technology and resources needed to keep Australian children under 16 off their services, and that a layered approach to verification, if implemented correctly, ensured there was no single point of failure.
The finding adds to a pattern of reported non-compliance since the ban’s introduction in December. The government initially said the ban had removed approximately 4.7 million suspected underage accounts within its first month. By March, officials had warned of potential enforcement lawsuits against five platforms, and last month the government said it would double the maximum penalty for non-compliance, accusing platforms of setting the ban up to fail. Platforms have said they are following regulator guidance that prioritizes low-friction verification methods as a first step, and are barred from relying solely on government-issued identification because of privacy concerns.
Some advisers to KJR’s original 2025 trial said they had raised concerns throughout that process about insufficient testing of real-world circumvention methods, including underage users simply entering false birthdates. “We did want to talk about circumvention, but we kept on being told that that wasn’t part of the actual trial,” said Colm Gannon, Australia CEO of the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children.
Amanda Third, a youth digital rights academic who advised the original trial and is now involved in a two-year regulator study assessing the ban’s impact, said platforms had always been expected to begin by acting on self-declared underage sign-ups before escalating to broader age-inference methods around the middle of the year. She said data collected after this point may show more substantial results.
