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

Summary

The Online Safety Act will be strengthened to give Australia's eSafety Commissioner tougher enforcement powers against social media platforms that fail to enforce a minimum age requirement for users. Currently, platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat are supposed to keep children under a certain age off their services, but there's limited ability to punish them if they don't comply. This amendment creates clearer penalties and enforcement mechanisms, making it more costly for platforms to ignore age restrictions. For families, this means stronger protection for younger children from exposure to content designed for adults, and platforms will have real incentive to actually verify users' ages rather than just claiming to have policies.