"I'm a little sad that kids can't have social media. But it took the pressure off having what everyone else has." That is how one Australian child aged 10 to 12 answered a survey from the country's online safety regulator, three months after Australia banned social media accounts for under-16s. Another child, aged 13 to 15, answered the same question very differently: "I feel more isolated and distant from everyone in my life."
Both answers are genuine, and neither proves that the law "works" or "has failed". Together, though, they show what the debate now running across Europe is really about. It is not only about an age. It is about what a child gains and what a child loses when the feed disappears.
What Australia did
On 10 December 2025, Australia's social media minimum age came into force. One detail matters: the obligation sits with the platforms. They must take "reasonable steps" to stop under-16s from holding accounts. Children and parents face no penalties.
Australia was the first country to set such a limit nationwide. That is why other governments are watching it closely — and why its first evaluation is being quoted very selectively.
What the first three months show
In mid-2026, the regulator, eSafety, published its first evaluation report. It was designed with Stanford University's Social Media Lab, and the data were collected by the Social Research Centre. The baseline survey ran in November–December 2025 (4,121 children aged 10–16, plus one parent each); the follow-up ran in March–April 2026. The analysis covers 803 children aged 10–15 who took part in both waves.
What changed in three months:
- children holding an account on at least one age-restricted platform fell from 52.4% to 42.1%;
- children who used such a platform in the past four weeks fell from 85.9% to 81.5%;
- about three in five children still use social media every day.
Headlines saying "81% still on social media" are accurate but incomplete. Holding an account and using a platform are different things: many children watch videos without logging in or through someone else's profile. The authors themselves stress that fewer accounts do not necessarily mean less access.
Why did accounts survive? Half of the children who kept one said the platform had not yet asked them to verify their age. Another 37% had an age of 16 or older on their profile, and for 18% the platform's age check got their age wrong.
Roughly one in ten said a parent had helped them get around the rule. VPNs, the most discussed workaround, were named by only 7%.
The more interesting change was in what children consider normal. The share agreeing that "most kids my age use social media" fell from 85% to 74%. Fewer parents said they felt pressure to go along with other families despite their own doubts: 17%, down from 23%. Parental support for the law stayed steady at about 68%.
Sleep, self-esteem and wellbeing showed no notable change over the three months. Two thirds of children said the law had had no impact on them. One in five reported a negative impact — although 44% had expected one before the ban.
The authors are clear about the limits. This is a snapshot after three months; the effects are small; the follow-up sample is only part of the original one; and the causes of the changes have not been established. The report does not assess whether platforms are complying.
Europe takes a different route
On 17 September 2026, the European Commission presented its proposal for an EU KIDS Act. It does not copy Australia. Instead of a single cut-off, it sets out steps:
- under 13 — no personal social media accounts (with a narrow exception for children's video services used through a parent's account);
- 13 to under 15 — a limited account set up by a guardian, with parental tools always on, at most one hour a day, and contacts approved by parents;
- 15 and over — an account of one's own, on a service that is required to be safe for minors.
The second half of the proposal is about design. For minors, it would ban endless scrolling and autoplay without real breaks, notifications designed to pull users back, rewards for posting, and "streaks" that punish a missed day. Recommendation feeds would have to be tuned for safety rather than engagement.
Age checks would be done by certified third-party tools, including a free EU app and, later, the European Digital Identity Wallet. The Commission promises "zero-knowledge proof" technology: the platform learns only whether a user has reached a certain age, without seeing any document. Providers that break the rules could face fines of up to 6% of worldwide annual turnover.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who announced the plan in her State of the Union speech the day before, described the debate as being about "when social media has access to our children and teenagers".
As of mid-October 2026, this is only a proposal. It must be agreed by the European Parliament and the Council of the EU, and public feedback is open until 26 November. In a plenary debate on 6 October, most MEPs welcomed it, but some doubted it would work, arguing that Australia's ban is easy to get around. Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen replied that Europe's age-verification tools are meant to prevent exactly that.
One problem, several answers
France went furthest — and was stopped. On 21 July 2026, Parliament gave final approval to a law banning social media for under-15s. On 14 August, the Constitutional Council struck that provision down.
It accepted that protecting children can justify restrictions, but found a general ban disproportionate: it ignored each child's situation and the different risks of different services, and gave parents no way to make exceptions. It added a privacy point: to keep out under-15s, everyone, adults included, would have to prove their age, and the law set no safeguards for doing so.
Germany is aiming lower and moving step by step. In June, an expert commission set up by the federal family ministry rejected Australian-style bans at 15 or 16 and proposed either a minimum age of 13 or feature-based limits. On 14 October 2026, the federal cabinet adopted key points: until the EU sets its own minimum age, a national transitional rule would in principle bar children under 13 from social networks, with exceptions for services shown to be child-appropriate. These are key points, not yet a bill.
The United Kingdom, outside the EU, chose the Australian model. After a consultation that drew more than 116,000 responses, the government announced on 15 June 2026 that it would ban social media for under-16s. According to the House of Commons Library, it aims to lay the regulations before Parliament by the end of 2026, with the ban taking effect in spring 2027.
Same problem, different thresholds: 13 in Berlin, 13 and 15 in Brussels' two steps, 15 in the French law that was struck down, 16 in Canberra and London.
The arguments on each side
Supporters of age limits make three main points. The first is about norms: the Australian data suggest that the pressure to "be like everyone else" eases when the rule applies to everyone. The second is about responsibility: the platform, not the child or the parent, should have to prove a service is safe. The third is about design: many features, such as endless feeds and streaks, are built to hold attention, and adults struggle with them too.
The arguments against are serious as well. Limits get circumvented, and children may simply move elsewhere: in Australia, use of Reddit and Pinterest rose over the three months, and the share of children messaging online every day went from 41% to 52%. The authors have not established why.
Checking everyone's age raises privacy risks — exactly the point France's Constitutional Council made. And some teenagers lose something real: friendships, interest communities, even a work chat. Before the ban, one Australian respondent aged 13 to 15 explained that staff at their job use Snapchat to swap shifts, "so I don't know how I will keep up."
What we don't know yet
Three months is far too short to say anything about mental health, learning or friendships. The Australian report calls its own effects small and preliminary; later waves of the evaluation should give a fuller picture.
It is also unclear whether Europe's age checks can be both reliable and respectful of privacy. Both requirements are easy to write into a law and hard to combine in practice. And the final text of the KIDS Act may differ substantially from the proposal: negotiations between Parliament and Council usually take many months.
What it means for readers
While laws are being written, the most important conversation happens at home. The Australian survey found a telling gap: on average, children considered 13.6 the "right" age for social media, while parents put it at 15.2 for their own child. That two-year gap is the space for an agreement no law can replace.
Perhaps the more useful question is not "from what age?" but "which feed, how much time, and who decides?" That is the question the European debate is now being built around.
Questions for discussion
- What matters more to protect: the age at which a child opens an account, or how the service itself is designed?
- Would you be willing to prove your age to use social media if the platform never saw your documents?
- How can parents and children agree on the "right" age when their views differ by about two years?
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