Reddit challenges Australia's world-first law banning children under 16
from social media
[December 12, 2025] By
ROD McGUIRK
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Global online forum Reddit on Friday filed a
court challenge to Australia’s world-first law that bans Australian
children younger than 16 from holding accounts on the world’s most
popular social media platforms.
California-based Reddit Inc.’s suit filed in the High Court follows a
case filed last month by Sydney-based rights group Digital Freedom
Project.
Both suits claim the law is unconstitutional because it infringes on
Australia’s implied freedom of political communication.
“We believe there are more effective ways for the Australian government
to accomplish our shared goal of protecting youth, and the SMMA (Social
Media Minimum Age) law carries some serious privacy and political
expression issues for everyone on the internet,” Reddit said in a
statement.
“While we agree with the importance of protecting people under 16, this
law has the unfortunate effect of forcing intrusive and potentially
insecure verification processes on adults as well as minors, isolating
teens from the ability to engage in age-appropriate community
experiences (including political discussions), and creating an illogical
patchwork of which platforms are included and which aren’t,” Reddit
added.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's government declined to comment on the
merits of Reddit's challenge.
“The Albanese government is on the side of Australian parents and kids,
not platforms,” a government statement said.
“We will stand firm to protect young Australians from experiencing harm
on social media. The matter is before the courts so it is not
appropriate to comment further,” the statement added.
Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X, YouTube
and Twitch face fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($32.9
million) from Wednesday if they fail to take reasonable steps to remove
the accounts of Australian children younger than 16.
Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, the law’s enforcer,
sent compulsory information notices to the 10 age-restricted platforms
on Thursday demanding data on how many accounts of young children they
had deactivated since the law took effect on Wednesday.
Inman Grant had predicted that some platforms might have been waiting to
receive their first notice or their first fine for noncompliance before
mounting a legal challenge.
ESafety will send six monthly notices to gauge how effectively the
platforms are complying.
Despite the court challenge, Reddit said it would comply with the law
and would continue to engage with eSafety.
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The social media ban for children under 16 slogan "Let Them Be Kids"
is projected onto the pylons of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Sydney,
Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (Mick Tsikas/AAP Image via AP)
 Australian children are searching
for alternatives to the age-restricted platforms. Downloads of Yope,
an app for sharing photos within friend groups, increased by 251%
since Monday, according to Apptopia, an intelligence platform
analyzing mobile apps.
Downloads of Lemon8 — a photo- and video-sharing app which, like
TikTok, was created by ByteDance — increased by 88%.
ESafety said it has written to Yope, Lemon8 and other smaller apps
to ask them to self-assess whether they meet the definition of an
age-restricted platform. If they do, they also face fines if they
don’t exclude young children.
Experts say policing age restrictions in the rapidly evolving social
media landscape is like a game of Whack-a-Mole. But government
authorities expect a more fragmented social media marketplace would
not appeal as strongly to young children who fear exclusion from
their peers and missing out.
The platforms’ age-verification options were to ask for copies of
identification documents, use a third party to apply age-estimation
technology to analyze an account holder’s face, or make inferences
from data already available, such has how long an account has been
held.
The government hasn't told the platforms how to check ages, but has
said requesting all account holders verify their ages would be
unnecessarily intrusive, given the tech giants already have
sufficient personal data on most people to perform that task.
For privacy reasons, the platforms also cannot compel users to
provide government-issued identification.
Documents filed with the court registry show Reddit will ask the
seven High Court judges to rule the law is invalid.
Alternatively, the company wants the court to prevent the government
from listing Reddit among the age-restricted platforms.
The High Court will hold a preliminary hearing in late February to
set a date for Digital Freedom Project's challenge on behalf of two
15-year-olds. It is not yet clear whether the two challenges would
be heard together.
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