🇦🇺 Meta Removed More Than 750,000 Teen Accounts in Australia

Meta says it has removed access to more than 750,000 Facebook and Instagram accounts in Australia since June 2025 after its systems determined they belonged to users under 16.
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The number is up from around 550,000 accounts reported in January, as Meta improves enforcement of Australia's under-16 social media restrictions.
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➡️ AI is helping detect underage users
Meta says its systems analyze posts, comments, bios and captions for clues about a user's age, including birthday celebrations and references to school grades.
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Parents and other users can also report accounts they suspect belong to someone under 16.
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➡️ But most teens are still getting through
Despite the removals, Australia's eSafety Commission found that 81.5% of underage users continued accessing restricted social media apps.
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Among children who still had restricted accounts, 50.2% said the platform had never asked them to verify their age, while 18.2% said the platform estimated their age incorrectly.
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Meta argues that age verification should happen once at the operating system or app store level, rather than requiring every social platform to build its own age-checking system.

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