Australian online platforms are facing serious difficulties at the very first stage of verifying users’ ages, casting doubt on the effectiveness of the world’s first ban on social media use by teenagers under 16. This conclusion was reached by specialists from KJR, a company that advised the government during the rollout of the new restrictions, Reuters reports.

Since December last year, Australia has had a law in force prohibiting people under 16 from having social media accounts, including on Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube. Platforms are required to take “reasonable steps” to comply, and the authorities recommended using several methods to verify users’ ages.

However, the law has faced widespread criticism. Studies show that most teenagers under 16 can still use social media. In response, last month the Australian government doubled the maximum fines for non-compliance and warned tech companies of possible legal action.

In the new study, KJR specialists registered 50 test accounts after the law had already come into force. In all cases, an age of 16 was entered during registration, yet none of the platforms required the user’s age to be confirmed.

According to KJR director Andrew Hammond, this previously unpublished finding exposed a serious flaw in the system. The main focus during the law’s implementation was on the accuracy of age-recognition technology based on photographs, while the initial screening stage, based on analysis of a user’s general online activity, is practically failing to identify minors or direct them to additional checks.

“Users are supposed to be asked to confirm their age, but we were not asked even once to undergo verification or use any age-confirmation tools,” Hammond said.

All 50 test accounts remain active. They were registered on nine out of the ten platforms covered by the law, including Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube.

According to Hammond, some dummy accounts began receiving advertisements for youth banking products, suggesting that the platforms had independently determined the users’ age group. At the same time, one of the test accounts on social network X, which had listed its age as 16, received recommendations containing pornographic content.

None of the platforms allowed registration for users who explicitly stated they were under 16. The only exception was the Australian streaming platform Kick, which required documentary proof of age at the account creation stage.

Snap and TikTok declined to comment on the study’s findings. Google and X did not respond to journalists’ requests. A Meta spokesperson said that, in their view, KJR’s experiment did not comply with the regulator’s guidance, under which formal age verification should be carried out only when there are signs that a user may be underage or after a complaint has been received.

The company also noted that the test accounts were registered as belonging to people above the minimum permitted age, and it is unclear whether they posted content or behaved in the same way as real users under 16.

A spokesperson for Kick explained that the service cannot rely on automated age estimation because the platform is still too new and does not yet have enough data for such algorithms.

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner said the office remains confident in platforms’ ability to prevent children under 16 from registering. According to the agency’s spokesperson, a properly implemented multi-layered age-verification system eliminates any single point of failure.

After initial government statements that the new law had led to the removal of about 4.7 million allegedly underage accounts in just one month, the rollout of the restrictions was accompanied by numerous reports of non-compliance. As early as March, the government warned five major platforms of possible lawsuits, and in June it announced higher maximum fines, accusing tech companies of insufficient efforts to implement the law.

At the same time, platform representatives say they are following the regulator’s recommendations, which provide for minimally intrusive initial user checks. The law also prohibits companies from relying exclusively on government-issued IDs for age verification because of concerns related to personal data protection.

Some participants in the pilot project had warned back in 2025 that the trials were incomplete because they did not take into account the most obvious way to circumvent the restrictions — teenagers entering a false date of birth.

“We wanted to discuss the issue of bypassing the system, but we were constantly told that this was outside the scope of the study,” said Colm Gannon, CEO of the Australian branch of the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children.

According to him, this has now become the most common method among underage users.