The government has outsourced the social media age problem to the platforms

September 16, 2025 7:39

Welcome to a Tuesday update written for Unmade’s paying members. Everyone else will hit a paywall further down.

Today: We now know the rules on social media age gates. All of the onus will be on the platforms to figure it out.

It’s your last chance to sign up to a paid membership of Unmade and lock in all of the current benefits. In a few weeks’ time, we’re going to stop accepting new paying members of Unmade. Instead we’ll be offering membership of an expanded Mumbrella Pro as we bring the two brands closer together.

All Unmade membership perks will be carried across, including complimentary tickets to REmade, Unlock and Compass for our annual paying members. These won’t be available to anyone else as part of the new Mumbrella Pro membership.

Your paid membership also includes exclusive analysis, like the piece below, and access to our content archive, which goes behind the paywall six weeks after publication.

Your voucher code is available at the end of today’s post.

Upgrade today.

A catalyst for the future

Launching the call for session proposals for the next edition of, Mumbrella360 curator Cat McGinn writes:

In 2012, I helped curate an event that was named Event of the Year at the Australian Event Awards. That year, Mumbrella360 was the beating heart of a media and marketing industry just beginning to grapple with digital disruption and platform shifts.

Then, technology brought us together. We screened Twitterstreams live and built a gamified mobile app to encourage people to connect online.

When I returned to curating events in late 2022, everything had changed.

The government makes age limits the platforms’ problem

From a political perspective, the smartest thing about how the government has set up the rules on the social media age limitations is this: implementing them is going to be entirely a problem for the platforms.

However, that will also make enforcing the rules down the track much more challenging, as the grey areas are going to occupy a lot of space. Some kids will be able to circumvent the rules, while the chances are that some a little older than 16 will get caught up.

The eSafety Commissioner’s guidance makes clear that the key phrase “reasonable steps” is going to do a lot of the heavy lifting.

What we are not going to see, come December 10, are most users of the internet suddenly being asked to upload their driving licence in order to go on buying stuff on Facebook Marketplace.

Instead the platforms are expected to use their greatest secret weapon – the ability to make inferences based on the subtle signals sent by every user – to decide whether they are close to the age of 16.

For the vast majority of users, whose history and behaviour on the platforms suggest they are older, they will be unlikely to be asked to prove their age. As the guidance spells out: “Providers are not required to age verify all their end-users to meet their reasonable steps obligations.”

However, they will be expected to figure out systems to guess when users are younger, and to take greater steps around those whose age might hover either side of the 16-year-old limit.

That includes deactivating accounts “with kindness, care and clear communication” where the users are probably below the age of 16.

A likely flash point will be for platforms that fail to provide sufficient human avenues of appeal. The multiple recent news stories of brand owners losing control of Instagram and Facebook accounts after being falsely flagged as breaking the rules, but then being unable to find a human to appeal to, demonstrate where things may go awry. That could include when users are wrongly reported as under 16.

As the guidance puts it: “To prevent misuse of the reporting system, providers should implement both automated and human review processes to filter out malicious or spam reports.”

Will that (potentially expensive) human review process be properly put in place by the platforms? We’ll see.

And also coming down the track, but with far less coverage, is the change next March that will see sites with adult content expected to lock out users below the age of 18. Similar rules in the UK have seen a big fall in visits to the largest porn sites. Again, the obligation will be on the site owners to figure it out.

It’s clever politics. By choosing not to spell out a single solution, the government outsources the problem, and leaves it to the platforms to decide how many risks they want to take in locking out users.

What’s green on top and red at the bottom? The Unmade Index

The top end of town did the heavy lifting on the Unmade Index today.

Nine, Ooh Media and Ive Group all grew their market capitalisations, while Seven West Media, ARN Media, Southern Cross Austereo, Vinyl Group and Enero all went backwards.

Ive group saw the biggest positive move, rising by 3.5%. Vinyl Group saw the biggest decline of the day, losing 4.8%.