The news: Three months after Australia implemented a first-of-its-kind social media ban for users ages 16 and under, 70% of them are still accessing banned platforms. Australian online safety regulator eSafety said “a substantial proportion of Australian children under the age of 16 continue to retain accounts, create new accounts, or pass platforms’ age assurance systems” in a report published Wednesday.

Enforcement has moved at a slow crawl. eSafety said 4.7 million accounts were impacted shortly after the ban took effect—by March, only another 310,000 accounts had been affected.

eSafety also said it was investigating Snap, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube for potential noncompliance and aims to “make a decision about any enforcement” by mid-2026.

Zooming out: Australia’s social media ban inspired a string of age verification efforts worldwide, including a ban in Indonesia that went into effect on Saturday. While US adults broadly support federal social media restrictions for youth, the social media and marketing industries worry about signal loss or similar regulations extending to digital advertising data. But eSafety’s report shows the splashy legislation has landed with a thud.

The ban’s poor performance is somewhat expected; social media is baked into youth culture and communication, and age enforcement has always been a pain point for internet companies. But social platforms also have little incentive to comply and have left loopholes in place, like allowing users to input their age multiple times to circumvent restrictions.

Implications for marketers: Social media bans are still in their early days, and though enforcement may strengthen over time, concerns about immediate user drop-offs and signal loss may have been overblown. But the global wave of proposed and enacted age verification regulation shows that a redrawing of the lines is incontrovertible.