Australia’s social media ban has led Snapchat to lock or disable more than 415,000 accounts identified as belonging to users under 16.
Snapchat said the action covered Australian accounts where users had declared an age below 16 or were assessed as underage using the company’s age-detection systems. The figures apply up to the end of January, with the company adding: “We continue to lock more accounts daily.”
The measure follows the introduction in December of Australia’s Social Media Minimum Age (SMMA) law, which requires certain platforms to prevent people under 16 from holding accounts.
Snapchat was among 10 services initially named as being required to comply. In January, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said 4.7 million accounts across those platforms had been disabled or removed in the first days of the ban.
Snapchat said it was complying with the law but warned of weaknesses in how it is being applied. The company said there are “significant gaps” that could undermine the policy, pointing to limits in age-verification tools.
It cited a government-run trial published in 2025 that found facial age-estimation technology was typically accurate only within two or three years of a person’s actual age.
Snapchat said: “In practice, this means some young people under 16 may be able to bypass protections, potentially leaving them with reduced safeguards, while others over 16 may incorrectly lose access.”
The company also raised concerns that the ban applies unevenly across the digital ecosystem. It said teenagers could shift to other messaging services that fall outside the scope of the law or remain unregulated.
Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, has previously acknowledged that enforcement is being phased.
While all platforms with Australian users are expected to assess whether they must comply, regulatory attention has so far focused on the original 10 services.
“We’re a small team, by necessity we are going to focus where the preponderance of young people are – where there are more than 250,000 for instance, is one measure,” Ms Inman Grant told reporters in December.
“A lot of the other smaller companies that we’re looking at have about 100,000 users. And so this will continue to be a work in progress. We’re not done by any means.”
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Under the legislation, companies can be fined up to A$49.5m (£24.5m) if they fail to take what the law describes as “reasonable steps” to keep under-16s off their platforms.
The regulator has declined to publish a platform-by-platform breakdown of the 4.7 million accounts removed since the ban began. It is understood that the total includes not only accounts identified as belonging to under-16s but also historical, inactive and duplicate accounts. Aside from Meta and Snapchat, other companies have not disclosed how many accounts they have deactivated.
Snapchat, like Meta, has called for age verification to be handled at the app-store level rather than by individual platforms. In a detailed statement, the company said it supported the goal of improving online safety but opposed a blanket ban.
“We want to be clear: we still don't believe an outright ban for those under 16 is the right approach,” it said, adding that it “fundamentally disagree[s] that Snapchat is an in-scope age-restricted social media platform”.
Snapchat described itself as “primarily a messaging app used by young people to stay connected with close friends and family” and said cutting off those connections did not make teenagers “safer, happier, or otherwise better off”.
Australia’s approach is being closely watched overseas. The UK is considering similar legislation, and this week the House of Lords backed an amendment to support a ban for under-16s.
