Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026

Summary

Australia's online safety regulator will get stronger powers to enforce a minimum age requirement for social media platforms, likely making it easier to penalize companies that fail to keep young children off their services. This amends the Online Safety Act 2021, which currently sets the rules for how platforms must operate in Australia. The change matters because social media companies have struggled to verify users' ages, and this enforcement boost aims to better protect children from accessing platforms that may not be suitable for them and to hold companies accountable when they don't do enough to check ages.