Months after Australia introduced landmark legislation banning children under 16 from accessing major social media platforms, new usage data reveals that underage engagement with apps including TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat has rebounded sharply, nearing pre-ban levels in many age groups. This world-first policy, implemented last December, has been watched closely by governments across the globe, with the United Kingdom, France and other nations already moving to adopt similar restrictions, and New Zealand announcing this week that it will introduce its own strict regulatory bill that could hit non-compliant tech giants like Meta with fines equal to up to 10% of their annual global revenue.
The new usage figures were released Wednesday by Qustodio, a leading provider of parental control software, which tracks anonymized monthly activity from Australian households using its services. The company defines active usage as any child opening an app for at least five consecutive minutes at least once per month. Immediately after the ban went into effect, Qustodio recorded a broad, across-the-board drop in underage social media use. But that initial dip has not been sustained: across the two tracked under-16 age groups — 10 to 12 years old and 13 to 15 years old — usage across all three major platforms has climbed steadily back up.
The rebound is most stark for TikTok, the world’s fastest-growing short-form video platform. Among 13 to 15-year-olds, 25.9% still actively use the app, only 1.1 percentage points lower than the pre-ban baseline. For 10 to 12-year-olds, TikTok usage is just 0.06 percentage points below pre-ban levels, a statistically negligible difference. Alongside major social platforms, the data also shows a growing shift toward WhatsApp, the Meta-owned messaging platform that is not covered by Australia’s current age ban.
Yasmin London, Qustodio’s global online safety expert, outlined multiple potential explanations for the unexpected rebound. Many underage users may be evading the ban’s safeguards by using virtual private networks (VPNs) to mask their location, or by lying about their date of birth during account registration. More critically, London noted that the data suggests the core issue may be that the restrictions themselves are simply not being enforced effectively enough to block widespread access. “It could really be as simple as they’re just accessing these apps because the restrictions aren’t working,” she said.
Australian federal officials have defended the ban, framing it as a critical safeguard to protect young people from well-documented harms including online bullying, mental health distress, and the impact of predatory recommendation algorithms that prioritize engaging, often harmful content to keep users on platform. However, Qustodio’s findings align with earlier independent research: a peer-reviewed study published in June by a team of Australia-based academic researchers found little evidence that the ban had driven a lasting drop in teenage social media engagement.