Social Media Age Restrictions Pose a Growing Challenge for Platforms

The Australian government has recently proposed enforceable age limits for social media users under 16, joining a growing list of regions including Denmark, Florida, and the U.K. While this move highlights concerns around teen usage of social media, the lack of a viable age-verification system raises questions about its practicality.

This has obvious implications for social media platforms as a whole, especially those that are more popular with teen and tween markets. Many social media platforms already offer ways for underage users to filter out adult content and prevent messages from random users, but these are easily disabled and can often harm their ability to use the site properly.

While protecting underage users is a good thing regardless of the downsides, it could also strip away a significant percentage of many platforms’ user bases, notably including Snapchat and TikTok. With an estimated 20% of Snapchat’s users under 17 and a third of TikTok’s U.S. audience under 16, these platforms stand to see a major dip in their user numbers if these restrictions are ever enforced.

Beyond that, no clear system has been mentioned yet, which would leave platforms with the task of having to build these verification systems from scratch. Depending on how the restrictions are laid out, this could be an easy trust-based system or something that requires in-depth data collection on every single user.

Ultimately, while age restrictions might address concerns about teen well-being, the lack of clear enforcement mechanisms makes the effectiveness of such measures uncertain. As social media platforms navigate these proposals, their long-term strategies will reveal who stands to benefit—and who stands to lose.