Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Australian federal government is forging ahead with its “world-leading” legislation aimed at protecting Australian under-16s from social media harms. Last week, it was announced that YouTube—previously the beneficiary of a carve-out that excluded it from earlier versions of the legislation—will now be included in measures to “protect young Australians at a critical stage of their development, giving them three more years to build real world connections and online resilience.”

The legislation—which will take effect on December 10, 2025 and requires social media access to be delayed until age 16—will apply to platforms if they:

• are primarily or substantially designed to facilitate online social interaction between two or more users;
• enable users to connect with other users; and
• provide users with the ability to publish content.

Exemptions are created for platforms whose primary purpose includes:

• Messaging, emailing, voice calling or video calling
• Playing online games
• Sharing information about products or services
• Professional networking or professional development
• Education
• Health
• Communication between educational institutions and students or their families
• Facilitating communication between providers of healthcare and people using those providers’ services.

Platforms failing to take reasonable steps to prevent workarounds will face fines of up to A$50 million; however, users who gain access to platforms through such workarounds will not be fined. The legislation targets the behavior of operators—user behavior will change accordingly.

Including YouTube in the ban has generated curiosity around how the legislation will be enforced—or indeed, how platform operators will comply. Not least is how—unlike other platforms the legislation targets—YouTube does not require users to have an account for access. Furthermore, it is yet to be revealed how platform operators will be able to verify user ages for both new and existing accounts. An age assurance technology trial is under way, and an upcoming report will disclose its progress; other age verification options may include banks or mobile providers confirming a user’s age, asking users to upload a photo that is then matched with a photo ID, or employing facial age estimation technology.

It appears that the targeted platforms must have received age verification from all Australian account holders by December 10 to be deemed compliant. For a highly connected population of over 27 million people—with 18 million estimated to be older than 16—this will not be a trivial exercise. This effort will also not manage to stop children accessing the sites—as the checks done on account ownership are not done for each individual site access.

Moreover, UK regulations effective in July have required all site visitors of pornographic content to verify their age when logging in. With only a subset of the population accessing the sites, an additional 5 million age checks have been conducted daily. However, there has been a massive increase in downloads of virtual private network (VPN) software from Apple and Google App Stores—as of late, four of five downloads to UK addresses from the Apple app store have been for VPN software; Proton (a widely used VPN app) has shown an 1,800 percent increase in downloads. VPNs conceal the location of a user and thereby thwart the use of location-specific checks, enabling UK users to bypass the age verification requirements. Australians are already high users of VPNs—more than a quarter using this tool already—making it extremely difficult for platform operators to effectively shut out under-16 users.

With loopholes available to allow users to circumvent even the best platform operator controls, the chances of success for the legislation seem quite slim. Prime Minister Albanese is well aware of this, but his government is ploughing on regardless.

It can hardly be considered an act of a responsible government to impose regulations that will likely be ineffective and practically unenforceable. So why is the Australian government persisting with this legislation?

The best explanation appears to be political signaling to an important constituency, seemingly confirmed by Albanese when he stated, “I want Australian parents to know that we have their backs.” Doing something—even when ineffective—sends a signal that he cares about this issue; doing nothing about the problem—though seemingly the more sensible option—does not. But as a former New Zealand Member of Parliament confided to me, the legislation may signal to the parents of under-16s that they have permission to take active measures to control their children’s online activities, something they may feel powerless to do without conspicuous social support and confronted by the objection that everyone else’s parents permit it. The legislation may bring about the desired—and likely most effective—ways of reducing online harm without having to target parents or vilifying them if they fail.