FOSI reports suggest support growing for Australia’s social media age minimum

The Australian experiment in establishing a minimum age for using social media presents two large problems for those who frame age assurance technology as a privacy threat.

The first is that it is politically popular. Movement on legislation is being driven in part by a groundswell of pressure from parents. Support transcends borders and partisan lines.

The second is that, as more time passes and more data accrues, it increasingly appears to be working.

A new report from the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) explores, per its title, “Australian Children’s and Parents’ Perceptions of the Recent Social Media Ban.” Its findings show that more kids support the prohibition now than they did before it came into effect, and that both parents and kids agree that it’s helping to protect the mental health and well-being of children under 16.

“Now that the ban is in effect,” says FOSI, “both groups are experiencing potentially unexpected improvements in child mental health.”

More kids support SMMA now than before it took effect

Prior to the implementation of the Social Media Minimum Age (SMMA) requirement, 65 percent of Australian parents supported the new restrictions. “In the months following the law’s enactment, Australian parental sentiment has not changed, with two-thirds (66 percent) of parents supporting the ban.”

“More notably, the number of Australian children who support the ban has increased since enforcement began, from 38 percent in support pre-ban, to 43 percent post-ban.” While the number remains under half, it could be the start of a shift in perception among young users.

On mental health impacts, the positive response has increased significantly. Before the law passed, 42 percent of parents and 33 percent of kids said it would improve youth mental health. Six months in, 62 percent of parents say the SMMA has led to an improvement in their kids mental health – and 58 percent of kids say the same.

What FOSI calls “the ban” corresponds with a drop in screen time for kids, yet there is dwindling concern that the new rule is leading to loss of connection and support for children; that number is down from 36 to 27 percent for parents, and down from 39 percent from 56 percent for kids.

The general trend is a gentle upwards tick in support for the measure, particularly from kids themselves. Nonetheless, FOSI is reluctant to judge the regulation either way, offering instead this fine commitment to ambiguity: “What has unfolded in Australia since December 2025 is complicated, and it is too early to declare the ban a resounding success, a catastrophic failure, or something in between.”

It remains true that Australia’s regulatory and enforcement system is still being worked out. In a recent speech to the Senate, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant stressed that the project will take time to execute in full, comparing it to systemic shifts around car and sun safety.

“I know there is strong interest in why fines have not yet been issued. Unfortunately, we do not have a fine-issuing button. Rather, systemic non-compliance needs to be proven in court with solid evidence and complex legal proceedings.”

“As I have said consistently, even before the law came into effect, this is a complex reform. It seeks to unwind more than 20 years of social media entrenchment in our daily lives and the dismantling of platform architecture that was engineered to be immersive and addictive for under-aged users.”

“We need to be clear-eyed about what this regulation is asking platforms to do; to cut off a lucrative pipeline of revenue now, and into the future.”

Asian countries have already built strict regulatory architectures

More educational from FOSI, if not more convincing, is a report that looks at social media laws from an Asian perspective.

“Several Asian countries have been regulating children’s online activity for over a decade, and they have done so in ways that look fundamentally different from Australia’s blanket platform ban,” says the report.

“The four jurisdictions that pioneered children’s online safety regulation in Asia – China, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan – share something the Australia-following countries do not: they have all observed, over the better part of a decade, that blunt access restrictions tend to fail.”

The report says that, “despite very different governance systems,” experience has taught them all to embrace a common insight: “it is more effective to regulate the broader architecture of the digital environment (the device, the algorithm, the app store, the household) than to regulate the underage user account.”

Age assurance by total social control: oppressive – but effective!

While there is much to learn in the document, which breaks down governance systems, cultural beliefs (notably Confucian ethics) and stance toward authority, FOSI’s conclusion will be untenable to most in the EU, UK and North America.

“If children want to circumvent restrictions and adults are unwilling to deploy invasive surveillance, the gap between policy intent and policy reality will remain” with the Australian access model, it says.

Yet it does not seem adequately able to interrogate the consequences of invasive surveillance. It suggests that China’s architectural approach to online regulation is “the most comprehensive.”

Here is how it is described:

“The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has enforced a ‘minor mode’ built into the operating system of every smartphone, tablet, smart watch, and smart speaker sold in the country. The system operates through what the CAC calls a ‘three-party collaboration’ – device manufacturers, app developers, and app stores must coordinate so that activating ‘minor mode’ on one device automatically updates linked devices and apps.

The mode “enforces age-tiered daily screen time limits, blocks internet access between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., filters content through age-appropriate content pools, and requires parental verification via password, fingerprint, or facial recognition to exit.”

The model is held up as “more resilient to bypass” than age-level restrictions – even if it is not “a clean fit for democratic, rights-prioritizing jurisdictions.”

While this highlights the divergent ways online regulation can unfold globally, depending on specific national and cultural contexts, it makes for poor supporting evidence. There may be an argument for targeting features and devices, but “just get the Politburo to do it” is definitely not it. The ultimate fear expressed about Australian style age restrictions is that they limit kids’ freedom and put everyone’s privacy at risk. Replacing them with a surveillance state, therefore, does not count as a solution.

The debate is increasingly moving beyond whether children should be protected online and toward how those protections should be implemented. Australia has chosen account-level age restrictions. Several Asian countries have focused on devices, platforms and operating systems. The next phase of the debate may be less about age assurance itself and more about where responsibility for online safety should reside.

Article Topics

age verification  |  APAC  |  Australia age verification  |  China  |  regulation  |  social media