Australia's Challenge in Enforcing Social Media Age Verification

Australia’s Challenge in Enforcing Social Media Age Verification

Australia is taking a bold step in online safety with the passage of the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024, that mandates that from December 2025, social media platforms must take reasonable steps to prevent users under 16 years old from creating or maintaining accounts. This legislation reflects growing concern over the exposure of young users to harmful content and interactions online.

This is a significant and positive step to protect teens and minors from harmful social media, but implementation of age verification remains the biggest challenge in this legislation.

Learning from the UK: A Starting Point

The UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom, has published guidance on age checks for online safety, outlining various methods such as ID verification, credit card checks, and AI-based profiling here (OfCom article). The article is mainly aimed to verify individual before accessing adult site, but some of these approaches can be adopted by Australia. Keeping in mind that while the article offers a useful starting point for Australia, the suggested approach may not all practical or privacy-preserving for Australia’s context—especially when dealing with minors.

The article cited 7 approaches to verify adults in UK, I believe, the most relevant one is the Facial Age Estimation.

‍Facial Age Estimation as the Most Viable at verifying individuals before accessing adult sites Option

Among the available technologies, Facial Age Estimation stands out as the most promising method for Australia. It allows platforms to estimate a user’s age based on facial features without requiring identity documents, which is particularly important for protecting the privacy of teens.

However, implementing this method is far from straightforward. It would require:

• Advanced AI models capable of accurate age estimation across diverse demographics.
• Device-level integration, requiring major phone manufacturers like Apple and Google to implement these features
• Platform- level capabilities, Face Age Estimation could be the responsibility of social media platforms like Meta, Snapchat or others
• Robust privacy safeguards to ensure biometric data is not stored or misused.

Face Age Estimation Implementation Challenges

Despite its promise, Facial Age Estimation presents significant hurdles:

• Technological Limitations: While many advanced AI tools can estimate the age of the person based on photo, there is no unified infrastructure and tools to deploy this method at scale. This as noted above will have to be the responsibility of technology companies like phone manufacturer or platform providers.
• Privacy Concerns: Australians have expressed low trust in digital platforms to handle personal data securely, especially following past data breaches.
• Platform Responsibility: The legislation places the onus on platforms to enforce age restrictions, with no penalties for underage users or their guardians
• Platform Capabilities: If this feature would be the responsibility of the platform providers, the capabilities of these and the accuracy of the method need to be properly vetted by the Australian Government
• Storage of biometrics: Biometric storage and security concerns will remain a major hurdle in this.

An alternative approach may be that the Australian government will take that responsibility by creating minor-ID akin to the MyID that is currently used to verify adults, but we know that government based technology projects may not be quick or even successful ( does the Mykie project ring a bell?) A trial is currently in place in Australia. Find out more about it here

What Australians Think

Consumer research commissioned by the Department of Infrastructure in August 2024 found that:

• 90% of adults support age assurance technologies.
• 73% of children understand why websites check for age.
• 80% of adults say age assurance would either not affect or positively influence their use of a website

These findings suggest strong public support for age verification, but also highlight the need for secure, privacy-conscious solutions.

Closing Thoughts

Facial Age Estimation may be the only feasible path forward for Australia’s age verification policy on social media. Yet, its success hinges on technological innovation, cross-industry collaboration, and public trust. As the December 2025 deadline approaches, stakeholders must work together to ensure that protecting young users does not come at the cost of their privacy.

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Feel free to contact us on info@spartanssec.com to discuss this further.

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