Lee Stephens.
Lee Stephens – Executive Chair – Meerkat Media.
Australia is preparing for a world-first policy from December 10, where social media platforms will be required to take reasonable steps to stop children under 16 from creating or maintaining accounts. On paper, the rule is clear. In practice, its success will depend less on enforcement and more on empathy, education and feedback. Particularly how these “reasonable steps” are translated into platform design and functionality changes, communication, and building trust in the first twelve months.
Effective regulation doesn’t live in legislation; it lives in experience. What a young person sees on their screen - the words, prompts, and moments of explanation - will determine whether this policy lands as protection or punishment.
This is where the newest data from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) matters most. Just released, the OAIC’s Children’s Consultation Report is the first to ask Australian children directly what privacy means to them. The answers are surprisingly rational. Around seventy percent of children said they dislike information about them being shared without their knowledge. Sixty percent wanted to know what information companies hold about them and to have the ability to change or delete it. Nearly half said location tracking should never be automatically on.
These are not the demands of users who need shielding from the internet. They are the expectations of emerging digital citizens. They want to understand and decide and not simply be managed. And that’s a subtle but crucial distinction as platforms scramble to comply with the new regime.
Australia’s Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act asks platforms to demonstrate those “reasonable steps” from the moment the rules take effect. In practice, that means evidence of systems to check age, processes to manage appeals, and privacy-preserving verification methods that don’t turn the legislative changes into another data grab. The eSafety Commissioner has already indicated that the first twelve months will be a proving ground, with particular scrutiny on transparency and user experience.
So, what might “reasonable” look like in the hands of an industry privacy professional rather than a lawyer?
Imagine a 14-year-old opening an app and seeing a message that says, “We’re checking your age to make sure this space stays safe for everyone. If you’re under 16, here’s what that means - and here’s what you can still do.”
Compare it to a blank, transactional screen that reads, “Access denied.” The first invites understanding and education; the other creates a determination to break the rules and access the very content we are trying to exclude. The chances are they will succeed.
This new OAIC research gives us a roadmap for getting this right. Children said they prefer information that appears in the moment when they’re about to share something, turn on a feature, or post publicly. They will never read a privacy policy. Google’s updated Australian policy stretches 64 pages. They want simple language, familiar visuals, and the ability to act in the moment. For example, a toggle switch for changing privacy settings is more empowering, and familiar on mobile, than a set of checkboxes they can barely read. They’re also asking for explanations that “teach, not just tell” in a short sentence that help them understand why a choice matters.
For platforms, the report findings are more than tips for improving their platforms for young Australians. They’re potential regulatory evidence. Every message, every prompt, every help page becomes part of the audit trail proving that a company took “reasonable steps.” Transparency isn’t just good strategy, it’s compliance strategy.
The first year of the age-ban rollout will test this balance. The major platforms will need to demonstrate diligence without surveillance and non-intrusively verify their users. That will mean documenting how they detect underage accounts, how they explain decisions, and how they protect the new data they inevitably collect. The government has been explicit about preferring “minimally invasive” approaches. It now falls on the platforms to clearly demonstrate their efforts to apply the key findings of this new research.
If they get it right in the next 12 months it will be a global success story of child protection across the Internet. A rare demonstration of what can be achieved from legislation where the responsibility is shared between regulators, platforms, and young users themselves. If they get it wrong, we’ll be back to headlines about teens outsmarting systems built to protect them.
The real measure of success for the social-media age ban won’t be a widely celebrated government press release on the number of under-16 accounts that have been shut down, but the number of young people who will finally understand what happens to their data and why.
Protection is easy to legislate. Any result will be impossible to achieve if younger Australians aren’t on board.