Australia’s under-16 social media ban has been in force for four months and the headline finding from a new working paper out of the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute is that around three-quarters of the teenagers it targets are ignoring it.
The paper, “Why Bans Fail: Tipping Points and Australia’s Social Media Ban,” surveyed 746 Australian teenagers between March and April 2026. Among 14- and 15-year-olds covered by the ban, only about 27% are complying. The other 73% are still using Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, X, YouTube, Reddit, Twitch, Threads, or Kick, the ten platforms the law designates off-limits to anyone under 16.
The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024 took effect on 10 December 2025, making Australia the first country to outlaw teenage social media accounts at the federal level.
More than a dozen other countries and numerous US states are now considering versions of the same approach. The Australian model places enforcement entirely on the platforms, which face penalties of up to A$49.5 million for failing to take “reasonable steps” to keep under-16s off their services. Teenagers themselves face no legal sanction.
The teenagers know this. According to the survey, only 22% of banned teens believe they personally face any consequence for using a banned platform.
47% correctly understand that the consequences fall on the companies. Awareness of the ban is near-universal at 86%. The teens aren’t confused about what the law says. They’ve simply concluded, accurately, that the law isn’t aimed at them.
Getting around the restrictions takes minimal effort. 75% of banned teens describe circumvention as easy or very easy.
The most common workarounds are the obvious ones: lying about age on verification prompts (57%), entering false birthdates at sign-up (44%), borrowing a parent’s or older sibling’s account (42%), and routing through a VPN (30%). 64% of 14- and 15-year-olds in the survey have not had their accounts removed at all. The platforms haven’t found them. A quarter of non-compliers report that a parent, older sibling, or other adult helped them sign up for a new account after a previous one was deactivated.
The researchers also asked teenagers a more interesting question. What share of your peers would need to stop using social media before you stopped? The average answer was 69%. Some teens placed the threshold even higher. The result holds across every way the question was framed, whether the reference group was age peers, classmates, the wider school, or “a typical person your age.” The numbers came out between 62% and 69% in every variant.
Hellbound and Down 