August 19, 2026, 06:41 GMT | Insight
Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said Wednesday that social-media platforms are likely to face enforcement action over non-compliance with the country’s under-16 social-media ban. She said the ban is intended to drive long-term cultural change rather than deliver immediate results, with eSafety’s first evaluation showing a 20 percent decrease in under-16s holding accounts. Inman Grant also said the agency is preparing for a Digital Duty of Care that would require platforms to proactively address online harms.
Australia’s online-safety watchdog on Wednesday said "enforcement action" is likely against social-media companies that fail to comply with the country’s social-media ban for under-16s.
Speaking at a webinar* on online safety and accountability, Julie Inman Grant, the eSafety Commissioner, said companies would see that the regulator is taking compliance with Australian law seriously. The watchdog has yet to launch civil penalty proceedings over the ban, and Inman Grant did not specify what form the expected enforcement action would take.
Her comments follow a wide-ranging Senate inquiry last week at which representatives from
Meta Platforms,
TikTok,
Google and Snap defended their efforts to comply with the social-media ban (see
here).
The inquiry was examining legislation that would double maximum fines to A$99 million ($70 million) for violations of the ban and give the eSafety Commissioner more investigative powers (see
here). In a submission to the Senate inquiry, the watchdog said it is unlikely to succeed in taking tech giants to court because it cannot compel them or third-party age-verification providers to hand over key documents that could prove non-compliance (see
here).
The online-safety regulator recently issued a report that suggested 80 percent of under-16s still had access to social media three months after the ban came into effect (see
here).
But Inman Grant said the agency is not trying to prevent children from accessing social media.
"We're trying to prevent social media from accessing our kids," she said.
— Tempering expectations —
During the webinar, Inman Grant said the ban represents a normative and cultural change, similar to the adoption of seatbelts.
“We're like the leader of the peloton and had no one drafting behind us and lots of shrapnel coming at us,” Inman Grant said. “But that is changing, and I do think it will change the overall global environment.”
She added that the social-media ban has been “a tremendous development,” with other countries now following Australia's lead, but she highlighted the need to temper public expectations.
“I think the biggest challenge has been the expectation about how quickly or how well this would work,” she said.
Inman Grant said a focus for the agency is on a forthcoming “Digital Duty of Care,” which would require online platforms to proactively reduce risks of harm, particularly to children, through ongoing assessments, mitigation measures and transparent reporting (see
here).
She said the “scaffolding” of the existing online-safety framework would be used for the duty of care and that businesses would find it to be “an evolution,” rather than a revolution.
*2026 Mallesons Digital Future Summit, Webinar, Aug. 18-19, 25-26, 2026.
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