Australia Banned Social Media for Under-16s — Yet 81.5% Still Use It. Singapore Is Choosing a Very Different Fight

SINGAPORE — Australia tried barring children under 16 from social media. Malaysia followed with mandatory age verification. Singapore is heading in another direction — and the experiment unfolding across all three countries is exposing just how difficult it is to keep young people safe online without creating an entirely new set of problems.

Singapore is preparing legislation for early 2027 that would force social media platforms to provide stronger protections for teenage users, potentially including daily usage limits, tougher controls on messages from strangers, stronger age checks and changes to addictive features such as autoplay and infinite scrolling.

But unlike Australia and Malaysia, Singapore has so far stopped short of announcing a blanket under-16 social media ban.

Instead, the government is signalling something more targeted: make the platforms themselves safer for children — or risk losing access to younger users.

Digital Development and Information Minister Josephine Teo said platforms that are unable or unwilling to meet Singapore's required safeguards could eventually have their minimum access age raised to 18.

That puts Singapore at the centre of a rapidly escalating global argument: Is the real problem that teenagers are on social media — or the way social media is designed to keep them there?

Australia’s Landmark Ban Has Run Into a Big Problem

Australia became the first country to put a nationwide social media minimum-age regime of this scale into effect when its restrictions started on December 10, 2025.

Platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitch, X, YouTube, Reddit, Threads and Kick are required to take reasonable steps to stop Australians under 16 from creating or keeping accounts.

Millions of accounts were subsequently removed, restricted or deactivated.

Yet months later, one number has become difficult for policymakers elsewhere to ignore.

Australia's eSafety Commissioner found that 81.5% of under-16s surveyed were still using social media in March 2026, whether through an account or otherwise.

Before the restrictions took effect, the figure was 85.9%.

The proportion actually holding social media accounts fell more significantly, from 52.4% to 42.1%, but regulators acknowledged that many children who previously had accounts had managed either to retain them or create new ones.

In other words, the ban changed behaviour — but it did not make social media disappear from teenagers' lives.

CNA's Talking Point found teenagers describing ways they had circumvented age checks, including creating new accounts or attempting to appear older during facial age-estimation procedures.

That has shifted attention from the concept of a minimum age to a much harder issue: enforcement.

Australia's government has since moved to strengthen the eSafety Commissioner's information-gathering powers and increase penalties for platforms that fail to comply. Legislation aimed at strengthening enforcement had passed the House of Representatives but remained before the Senate in the latest Australian parliamentary status available.

So Australia has become both a global test case and a warning.

Passing a ban may be easier than ensuring millions of teenagers cannot bypass it.

Malaysia Went Further on Age Verification

Across the border from Singapore, Malaysia has chosen a tougher identity-based approach.

Beginning June 1, 2026, licensed social media providers were required to implement age-verification measures intended to prevent children under 16 from registering or holding accounts.

Malaysia's Child Protection Code requires age verification to be based on official records, which can include documents such as MyKad, passports and other recognised documents.

Existing users were given a phased verification period of up to six months, while affected under-16 users identified during the process were to receive time to retrieve or transfer personal material before restrictions were imposed.

The policy potentially closes one obvious loophole in systems based largely on users typing in their own birthday.

But it opens another debate: privacy.

For parents and privacy advocates, requiring stronger proof of age raises questions about what information platforms receive, where that information is stored and what happens if sensitive data is compromised.

CNA reported concerns from Malaysian parents not only about personal-data security but also about displacement: teenagers blocked from major platforms could simply migrate to smaller services with weaker parental controls and safety systems.

That possibility highlights a recurring problem with internet regulation.

Closing one door does not necessarily remove the danger. It can simply move young users somewhere regulators — and parents — can see less clearly.

Singapore Is Targeting the Design of Social Media Itself

Singapore's emerging strategy appears built around that lesson.

Rather than assuming that every teenager can realistically be kept away from social media, officials are exploring ways to change what happens after a young person gets onto a platform.

Among the issues under consideration are:

• more reliable age assurance;
• limiting direct messages from unknown adults or strangers;
• restricting or changing algorithmic recommendation feeds;
• turning autoplay off by default for younger users;
• introducing natural stopping points instead of endless scrolling; and
• potentially imposing daily social media time limits.

Teo has said there is no single “magic number” for how much daily social media use is safe.

But Singapore has reason to look closely at usage time.

A government-linked expert panel examining social media and youth mental health found that one in three users aged 15 to 17 spends more than three hours a day on social media, while about one in six users aged 10 to 24 shows signs of problematic social media use.

Singapore's concern, therefore, is not simply whether young people have accounts.

It is also what platforms do once they have their attention.

Infinite Scroll Is Becoming a Regulatory Target

That represents a major change in the online-safety debate.

For years, governments concentrated heavily on harmful posts: pornography, bullying, scams, violent material, self-harm content and sexual exploitation.

Now regulators are increasingly examining product design itself.

Autoplay automatically supplies the next video.

Infinite scroll removes the natural moment when a user might otherwise stop.

Algorithmic feeds continuously predict which piece of content is most likely to keep someone watching.

For adults, those tools can make putting down a phone difficult. Policymakers argue that the risks can be greater for children and teenagers.

Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said in August that self-declared ages were no longer sufficient and called for stronger safeguards for young users. The government has also indicated that platforms failing to provide acceptable protections could face a higher minimum-access age.

Singapore already regulates six designated social media services under its existing online-safety framework: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, HardwareZone and X. IMDA has also said it plans to extend age-assurance requirements to designated social media services after introducing such requirements for designated app stores.

The Fight Is Going Global

Singapore, Australia and Malaysia are hardly alone.

Pressure on technology companies to provide stronger protections for children has accelerated internationally.

In the United States, Meta recently agreed to a massive settlement with states over allegations concerning harm to young users. The deal includes stronger age-verification measures and restrictions affecting Facebook and Instagram users under 18.

Among the measures is a default two-hour daily usage limit, providing policymakers elsewhere with another major real-world experiment in limiting how social platforms engage teenagers. Meta denied wrongdoing in reaching the agreement.

The broader debate is increasingly moving beyond one question — “How old must someone be to use social media?” — toward another:

What obligations should platforms have once they know a child is using their product?

Singapore appears determined to make that second question central to its approach.

But Age Verification Has Its Own Risks

There is no frictionless solution.

Reliable age verification may require platforms to analyse information about users, use official records or employ facial age-estimation systems.

The more accurate governments demand those systems become, the greater the concerns about privacy, data retention and mistaken classifications.

Singapore has acknowledged that tension.

Teo said data collected for age assurance would have to be proportionate — sufficient to make the protection system reliable without unnecessarily collecting personal information.

Recent international developments show why the issue is becoming so complicated.

Technology companies are increasingly experimenting with artificial intelligence, behavioural information and other signals to determine whether users are lying about their age. But privacy groups warn that building stronger digital age gates can create new risks involving identification, anonymity and personal information.

Protecting children, in other words, could require knowing more about everyone.

That is the trade-off governments now have to solve.

A Ban, a Digital ID Gate — or a Safer Platform?

The three-country comparison now provides Asia with three distinct models.

Australia: Keep under-16s from holding accounts and punish platforms that fail to take reasonable steps to enforce the restriction.

Malaysia: Require stronger official-record-based age verification and prohibit under-16s from holding social media accounts.

Singapore: Verify age more reliably, demand stronger protections according to a user's age and potentially block younger users from platforms that refuse to redesign their services.

None has yet produced definitive proof of the best solution.

Australia's early results show that restrictions can reduce account ownership but can also be bypassed.

Malaysia's rules may produce stronger age enforcement, but privacy and migration to less-regulated platforms remain concerns.

Singapore's safety-by-design strategy may preserve some of the benefits of online participation, but its effectiveness will ultimately depend on whether global technology companies are willing — or can be forced — to change products built around engagement.

That may be the most important part of Singapore's experiment.

The coming battle may no longer be simply about keeping teenagers off social media.

It could be about forcing some of the world's biggest technology companies to build a version of social media that governments are finally willing to let teenagers use.

And whether that can actually be done may determine what the internet looks like for the next generation.

WWC ONE MEDIA MJE