Australia is breaking fresh government tech ground with Kids Social Shutdowns
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Thursday, 20 November 2025 - 2 minutes
Heads up for your teens on the scroll!
Meta Platforms (that’s Facebook, Instagram and Threads) has begun telling Aussie users aged 13–15 that their accounts are about to get “lukewarm-deleted”.
That means come 4 December, no new sign-ups for under-16s - and by 10 December, the flush is on: access gets cut until you hit 16.
Teens will get a 14-day warning via app alerts, text or email.
Which is plenty of time to screenshot your feed, save meme history, and maybe say bye to all all your selfies.
Meta says Messenger stays untouched, so you can still chat - just no double-tap on the ‘gram for a while. If you get wrongly flagged as under-16, you’ll need a video selfie or government ID through a verification app called Yoti.
Eek.
Australia is breaking fresh government tech ground here. This move?
“Reasonable steps to block under-16s” is the legal promise, and platforms that don’t comply face fines up to A$50 million. Ouch.
So, young Aussies... if your phone pings with a weird message in the next two weeks, you might be getting that “see you in five years” email from Meta.
Save your memories now.
