New research published in the British Medical Journal has cast doubt on the early efficacy of Australia’s world-first Social Media Minimum Age Act 2024. The study, conducted by the University of Newcastle, monitored 408 adolescents aged 12 to 17 in the three months following the mandate, which requires major platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat to prevent users under 16 from maintaining accounts. Despite the legislation’s ambitious scope, the data indicates that more than 85 percent of adolescents in the restricted age bracket continued to access social media platforms. The findings suggest that the legislative framework has, at least in its infancy, failed to curb the daily digital habits of young Australians.
Lead investigator Dr. Courtney Barnes noted that the implementation of the policy has been characterized by deep inconsistency, preventing the act from achieving its intended cooling effect on adolescent usage. While approximately two-thirds of the study participants reported encountering some form of age verification measure, these checks were rarely robust. Self-declared age remained the most common form of verification, a barrier easily bypassed by users. Furthermore, the study captured clear evidence of “circumvention behaviors,” including the use of fake accounts and the leveraging of accounts belonging to older friends or family members to bypass stricter security protocols.
The longitudinal data collected before and after the act’s implementation highlights a stark divergence in behavior across different age groups. While daily usage remained generally stable for 12-to-13-year-olds and marginally declined among 14-to-15-year-olds, the overall time spent on these platforms saw no substantive decrease across the cohort. Curiously, daily use actually increased among those over 16, suggesting that while the law may have been intended to protect the vulnerable, it has yet to fundamentally shift the landscape of adolescent social media consumption. For those under 16 who chose to stay on the platforms, the experience of using the apps remained largely unchanged from the pre-legislation period.
As international observers monitor Australia’s experiment as a potential global blueprint, the study underscores the significant gap between legislative intent and technical execution. Professor Luke Wolfenden, a co-investigator on the project, emphasized that while these findings are sobering, they must be interpreted as a “preliminary snapshot” rather than the final verdict. He noted that platform compliance mechanisms are expected to evolve as tech giants face increasing regulatory pressure to refine their age-gating technologies, such as facial recognition or photo-based documentation, which currently remain inconsistent and easily subverted.
The research team maintains that the effectiveness of such a sweeping policy hinges entirely on how “age assurance” is operationalized in real-world settings. Because the underlying access to services remains essentially unimpeded, teenagers have continued to engage with algorithms and social networks as they did prior to the Act. Professor Wolfenden argued that policy, no matter how well-intentioned, is subject to a wide range of entrenched behavioral and environmental factors that cannot be legislated away overnight. He suggested that until these platforms deploy more rigorous and standardized verification, the “cat-and-mouse” game between regulators and minors will likely continue.
Ultimately, the University of Newcastle study serves as a call for patience and sustained scientific rigor. Researchers acknowledged that the full societal impacts of the Social Media Minimum Age Act—specifically regarding the long-term mental health and well-being of the youth—may take years to materialize. The team has called for continued, long-term evaluations of the policy as it matures, warning against drawing premature conclusions while the digital infrastructure of compliance is still in such an experimental phase. For now, the legislation acts more as a signal of intent than an effective barrier, highlighting the immense difficulty of imposing borders on a fundamentally borderless digital environment.
