Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Friday (July 3, 2026) condemned senators who blocked changes to a world-first social media ban for children, saying tech giants would use the delay to destroy incriminating documents that could be used as evidence against them.

The government this week introduced to Parliament amendments aimed at increasing powers of the eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, Australia’s online safety watchdog, to enforce the ban on Australian children younger than 16 from holding accounts on platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube that has been in place since December.

The amendments would have given Inman Grant power to demand documents as well as information from platforms about their efforts to exclude young children. She can currently only demand information.

But the conservative opposition Liberal Party and minor Australian Greens party referred the draft legislation on Thursday (July 2, 2026) to an eight-week Senate inquiry. The center-left Labor Party government does not hold a majority in the Senate.

“It is outrageous the delay because what the eSafety Commissioner has said very clearly is that that will allow the platforms to go and just delete a whole lot of material,” Mr. Albanese told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

“Whereas if it was passed yesterday, that would have been the date from which these demands could be made by the commissioner. So then fines can be issued,” he added.

The amendments would also give the commissioner power to demand information from third parties, including age assurance technology providers, to test claims made by platforms about how children continued to circumvent the ban.

The bill would double the maximum fine to 99 million Australian dollars ($68 million) for platforms that fail to take reasonable steps to exclude children.

Greens Sen. David Shoebridge, who has always opposed the social media ban, questioned why a fine that had never been issued needed to be doubled.

“Doubling penalties that they’ve never used doesn’t seem to me to be a meaningful measure,” Mr. Shoebridge told Sky News Australia. “Is that really going to be the thing that keeps kids safe online?”

Opposition communications spokesperson Sen. Sarah Henderson said the amendments needed to be tougher.

“This is a social media ban which is failing; a half-baked law which is poorly designed, which was rushed, which is badly implemented and which is not working,” Ms. Henderson said.

“We will interrogate this bill properly and, frankly, I think the amendments before the Parliament need to be tougher,” she added.

Parliament passed the initial legislation with overwhelming support in 2024. The 10 targeted platforms were given more than a year to implement the ban.

Many countries who have implemented or are planning similar restrictions have been closely watching progress of Australia’s ban.

The government initially reported more than 5 million children had accounts removed, deactivated or restricted after the ban became law.

But eSafety reported in March that seven in 10 children who held accounts on restricted platforms on Dec. 10 when the ban took effect remained on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok.

Ms. Inman Grant said in April she was considering court action against those platforms and YouTube, alleging they were not taking reasonable steps to exclude children.

She had been satisfied with progress made by the remaining restricted platforms: X, Kick, Reddit, Threads and Twitch.

Communications Minister Anika Wells said this week she had received monthly updates from eSafety since March and “we are not seeing improvements.”

Australia’s social media ban for under 16s has had little impact on teenagers’ scrolling habits, researchers said Thursday in one of the first evaluations of the world-leading measures.

Australia in December banned under 16s from the likes of Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, in a crackdown designed to protect children from online bullying and “predatory algorithms”.

But there is little evidence to suggest teenagers have turned away from social media as a consequence, a team of Australia-based researchers found in a peer-reviewed study published by the British Medical Journal.

Underage users have been dodging the restrictions by using accounts registered to older people, setting up fake accounts, or by logging into private browsers.

“We found insufficient evidence to conclude that exposure to the Act had any early substantial effects on social media use among adolescents aged under 16,” the researchers wrote.

There is strong global interest in whether Australia’s laws could provide a blueprint for how to rein in increasingly powerful tech giants.

A growing mass of nations have either introduced or are mulling similar bans— including the United Kingdom, Indonesia, the UAE and New Zealand.

The researchers surveyed more than 400 young social media users immediately before the restrictions came into effect, and again three months after.

There was little change for users aged 12-13, a slight decrease for the 14-15 age group, and an increase in use for those aged 16 and older.

“The findings suggest that the period immediately after the introduction of the act was characterised by limited implementation, incomplete compliance, and substantial circumvention of social media restrictions.”

Not ‘impossible’

Tech companies face fines of up to Aus$49.5 million ($34 million) if they fail to show meaningful efforts to weed out underage users.

Australia in March accused Facebook, TikTok and YouTube of failing to meet their obligations.

“Australia’s world-leading social media laws are not failing. But big tech is failing to obey the laws,” Communications Minister Anika Wells said at the time.

“None of this is impossible. None of this is even difficult for big tech, who are innovative billion-dollar companies.”

The nation’s eSafety Commission separately flagged “significant concerns” about Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube.

A growing body of research suggests too much time online is taking a toll on teen well-being, and Australia’s ban has been hailed as a godsend for parents sick of seeing children glued to their phones.

Although platforms have pledged to abide by the laws, they have warned the measures could instead push teenagers into dark, unregulated corners of the internet.

Social media companies bear the sole responsibility for checking that Australia-based users are 16 or older, and must prove they have taken “reasonable steps” to weed out young teenagers.

Some platforms are using AI tools to estimate ages based on photos, while users can also choose to prove their age by uploading a government ID.