Australia Removed 4.7 Million Accounts, 65.4% Said It Changed Nothing
From The Education Commute · 18:31
Show by The Education Commuter
Nine months ago Australia started requiring social media platforms to stop under-16s creating or keeping an account, and within a week the count of accounts removed or restricted hit 4.7 million. That number went round the world; the paragraph underneath it didn't. This episode reads the eSafety Commissioner's own compliance update and its three-month evaluation, including the caveats the regulator puts on its own headline figure, and then asks the only question that matters here: England and the UK are legislating the same thing for spring 2027, so what can a school actually use before it lands?What's covered: the eSafety Commissioner's Social Media Minimum Age: Compliance update (March 2026) and its three-month evaluation Early days, early insights (published 31 July 2026, baseline of over 4,000 parents and children). The headline figure - "about 4.7 million age-restricted accounts were removed or restricted from platforms" as at mid-December 2025 - carries the regulator's own caveat that it "reflects the number of age-restricted accounts removed or restricted, not the number of users who have lost access", not evidence of any platform's compliance. From 10 December 2025 the duty sits on platforms: "no penalties for under-16s who access an age-restricted social media platform, or for their parents or carers"; online gaming and standalone messaging apps are excluded. Account ownership fell from 52.4% at baseline to 42.1% at three months, most commonly because "the platform hadn't yet asked them to confirm their age (50.2%)", not VPN use. Parents unaware their child had used social media in the prior four weeks rose from 23.3% to 33.3%, while children agreeing "most kids my age use social media" fell from 85.1% to 74.0%. England's levers: Ofcom's Protection of Children Codes and DfE's Mobile phones in schools, with under-16 account restrictions expected in spring 2027.Sources: eSafety Commissioner (Australia), Social media age restrictions, page last updated 26 August 2026; eSafety Commissioner, Social Media Minimum Age: Compliance update, March 2026; eSafety Commissioner, Early days, early insights, published 31 July 2026; Ofcom, New rules for a safer generation of children online, in force 25 July 2025; Ofcom, Keep underage children off your platforms, Ofcom tells tech firms, 12 March 2026; Department for Education, Mobile phones in schools, statutory from 29 June 2026; Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, Growing up in the online world: government response, July 2026. All free to open and linked in the show notes. Not covered: any conversion of the Australian penalty ceiling into pounds, and all press coverage, which this strand never quotes. Both voices on this show are synthesised; the research, reading and editorial judgement are done by a serving practitioner.
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