Australia bans underages from using social media

Australia will ban children from using social media with a minimum age limit as high as 16, the prime minister said Tuesday, vowing to get kids off their devices and “onto the footy fields”.

Federal legislation to keep children off social media will be introduced this year, Anthony Albanese said, describing the impact of the sites on young people as a “scourge”.

The minimum age for children to log into sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok has not been decided but is expected to be between 14 and 16 years, Albanese said.

The prime minister said his own preference would be a block on users aged below 16.

Age verification trials are being held over the coming months, the centre-left leader said, though analysts said they doubted it was technically possible to enforce an online age limit.