Age assurance regulation for social media to go global in 2026

Australia’s law prohibiting social media for users under 16 took effect on December 10, with many nations looking to the rule as a potential template. Within a month, several countries have taken the next steps on age assurance legislation, outlining a vision for an internet in which social media is regulated by age like the movies or buying alcohol.

For some, the laws cannot come fast enough. Reports have emerged that Grok, the AI chatbot programmed into X, has been acting on prompts to nudify images of women and girls, some visibly children. The issue has raised fresh calls for regulation (not to mention prosecution for spreading child sexual abuse material, or CSAM) as LLM technologies fuse with social media to create new threats to privacy.

France pushes ahead on proposed social media age law

France is among the countries pursuing social media regulation with the most verve. President Emmanuel Macron previously said he wanted Parliament to begin looking at a social media age assurance law in January. Now, according to AFP, a draft law is circulating, proposing an age threshold of 15 to be implemented by September 2026.

Articles in the draft would prohibit “the provision by an online platform of an online social media service to a minor under 15,” and ban mobile phone use in secondary schools.

Coverage has imported the language from Australia’s legislation, framing the law as a “ban.” Free speech issues have guided this framing, and will likely continue to be central to the debate, as the U.S. continues to push American laws and interests on sovereign nations. Meta and X will be unhappy about the French law, and they have the ear of the Trump administration, which has already made hostile comments about Europe’s regulatory tendencies.

Ireland aims to balance economic interests, global regulatory trends

Ireland stands to draw special ire from Big Tech as it explores its own version of an age assurance law for social media. The country has played host to many of Silicon Valley’s big corporations, who have taken advantage of Ireland’s favorable tax laws. But as it assumes the EU presidency in 2026, it is also following Australia’s lead with a proposal to introduce identity verification for social media accounts, and a restriction on young users. That is sure to further arouse the ire of Big Tech and its allies in the U.S. government.

In an interview with Extra.ie, Tánaiste Simon Harris says “very exciting proposals” are being brought forward around age verification and a digital age of consent, including a government app for age assurance. “We’ve age requirements in our country for so many things. You can’t buy a pint before a certain age. You can’t drive a car before a certain age. You can’t place a bet before a certain age.”

“We have a digital age of consent in Ireland, which is 16, but it’s simply not being enforced. And I think that’s a really important move.”

Some disagree. The Irish Independent reports that some legal and digital experts are calling the proposed law “intrusive”, “illegal” and an “expensive national embarrassment.” Big Tech will surely join this chorus.

Harris is also eager to assuage fears among tech companies that Ireland is becoming unfriendly, calling it “a country with a proud track record of being a good home for major multinational companies” and assuring them that Ireland seeks “genuinely constructive engagement.”

But he also seeks strength in numbers, noting the global trend toward stronger regulation of social media. “If you look at the actions of Australia,” he says, “you know this is a global conversation Ireland will and should be a part of.”

US threatens to hold Australia’s eSafety commissioner in contempt

While proposed age check legislation spreads like dandelion wisps across the oceans, the U.S. is showing no signs that it will let the seeds settle as they fall. In recent weeks, the Trump administration has taken to imposing visa bans on foreign officials pursuing agendas that run counter to its interests, including five European citizens overseeing work on online safety legislation.

In assuming the role of global trailblazer in imposing age checks for social media, Australia has also faced mounting U.S. belligerence. In November, Jim Jordan, chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary of the U.S. House of Representatives, summoned Australia’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, to testify in front of a committee. Now, the Sydney Morning Herald reports that Inman Grant is being threatened with contempt charges by U.S. Congress if she fails to appear in the next two weeks.

Inman Grant is a dual national who holds U.S. and Australian citizenship. Jordan and his allies in the Republican party allege that she has worked to “design and implement a global censorship regime.”

In a fresh letter to Inman Grant dated December 30, 2025, Jordan alleges that “eSafety harassed American companies ahead of the implementation of the Social Media Minimum Age (SMMA) law” and notes that “courts have routinely found that U.S. citizens living abroad are within the jurisdiction of the U.S. government and can be compelled to provide testimony.”

“U.S. citizenship carries with it both benefits and responsibilities, and those, such as yourself, who enjoy the advantages associated with such citizenship should be willing to shoulder the responsibilities as well, including cooperating with congressional investigations. In other contexts.”

Jordan has given Inman Grant until January 13, 2026 to respond, after which “the Committee may have to consider, if necessary, additional steps to obtain compliance with our request.”

In light of the recent developments in South America, this should presumably be read as a direct threat to Inman Grant – who, if she fails to testify in the U.S., likely faces either restrictions on her citizenship and documentation, or physical capture and rendition. Regardless, the letter is further indication that the current administration has fully embraced the project of turning the States into a global bully, that will not hesitate to use its power and lever age to get what it wants, wherever it wants.

First results of social media law delayed by terror attack

Australia, meanwhile, has been devoting most of its resources to addressing the December 14 Bondi Beach attack, in which two gunman killed 15 people at a Hanukkah celebration, prompting a fresh wave of concern about growing antisemitism.

That has meant a delay in the publication of results showing how the social media prohibition has worked so far. The data, which eSafety initially promised to deliver the results by Christmas, will include the ten covered platforms’ responses to questions about numbers and traffic.

While the official data remains in limbo, informal indicators suggest that much of the tizzy around the social media law subsided almost immediately after it took effect. A piece in The Sizzle notes that media coverage around the December 10 implementation “prominently featured issues with implementing the ban.”

“But after zooming up the charts, the popularity of alternative apps like Yope, Coverstar and Lemon8 has cratered in the days after. VPNs, which saw a small uptick in popularity, have also gone back to normal.” Some teens remain on social media, defiant as teens are wont to be.  “Meanwhile, there have been only a few reports that adults have been unable to prove their ages and access their accounts,” the piece says.

“This is a quiet success for both the social media platforms and government, given that tens of millions of people have had their ages checked.”

In comments posted to LinkedIn, Tony Allen, director of the Age Check Certification Scheme (ACCS) and supervisor of Australia’s 2025 Age Assurance Technology Trial, makes a crucial but often ignored point about teens looking for unregulated alternatives to the big platforms.

“There isn’t evidence of a major shift to unregulated alternatives,” Allen says. “Some of these may have been tried initially, but they lack the network effect of mainstream social media, so they lack the utility for young people.”

In other words, the social media law works exactly because it limits teens’ access to huge platforms like Instagram and TikTok. No one wants a social network with no nodes; just ask Mastodon.

Allen says “the next stage is analysis and testing of age assurance providers, intermediaries and relying parties (like the social media companies). That will come through the roll out of the new ISO/IEC 27566-1 – Age Assurance Systems – Part 1: Framework.”

Nebraska law cracks down on AI-generated CSAM

A recent piece in The Atlantic asks, “will Australia ever know for sure if banning teens from social media makes their lives better?” The answer is still vague, but it’s probably “yes.” Much as time has shown the lasting negative impacts of social media on youth, so will time prove the effectiveness of the laws that aim to curb them. The integration of unregulated chatbots that will happily put an eight-year-old in a transparent micro-bikini are likely to add fuel to the idea that Silicon Valley’s flagships are no places for children.

The First Amendment argument, wielded with blunt force by an interventionist regime, will be a potent weapon for fighting legislation, and the U.S. appears unafraid to cast it beyond its own borders to shape the global regulatory landscape in its image.

That said, it may be easier for the Trump administration to dictate affairs internationally than it is for it to impose its will on individual states. Nebraska’s new online safety laws took effect on January 1. According to KETV, LB 504 aims to curb addiction through algorithms and protect minors’ private information, and the “Parental Rights in Social Media Act” (which combines LB 172 and LB 383) makes it a felony to possess sexually explicit AI- or computer-generated content that uses a minor’s picture, and puts parental consent and biometric age verification requirements on platforms – including social media.

NetChoice pledges to keep suing states in 2026

A factor in every instance of age assurance legislation across the states is NetChoice, the legal lobby for Silicon Valley, which has deployed its Litigation Center to sue relentlessly on the behalf of social media firms. NetChoice is currently fighting Utah’s Minor Protection in Social Media Act, in a battle waged via correspondence. A December 30 letter from the office of Utah Attorney General Derek Brown, arguing that NetChoice’s objection is invalid, was met by a December 31 letter from NetChoice lawyers, pointing to its Florida case to argue that Utah’s law is an unconstitutional attempt to regulate minors’ and adults’ access to protected expression.

NetChoice’s fight with Utah goes back to 2023, and it shows no sign of slowing down in its efforts there and across the U.S. The trade group recently won a permanent injunction on Louisiana’s version of a social media age check law, Act 456, and its 2025 year in review boasts that it filed 10 new cases in 2025, and promises that “when states go rogue, we’ll be there – in court, forcefully and deliberately protecting free expression and free enterprise.”

Article Topics

age verification  |  Australia  |  France  |  Ireland  |  legislation  |  Netchoice  |  regulation  |  social media  |  United States