--- title: "Age Restrictions" description: "In 2006, Facebook opened to anyone 13 or older. The age limit was self-reported. It took nearly 20 years for the first country to enforce a real restriction." url: https://attentionmachine.org/en/laws/age-restrictions/ lang: en updated: 2026-10-24 license: "CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/)" --- # Age Restrictions A global wave is now moving. Here is how long it took, what is changing, and what remains contested. ## The gap Facebook opened to anyone claiming to be 13 or older[^src-facebook-2006-b] in 2006[^src-facebook-2006]. The age limit was self-reported — a birthday entered at signup. No verification mechanism was required. By 2021, 38% of US children aged 8–12 had used social media[^src-common-sense-2022], and a Canadian survey[^src-mediasmarts-2022] the same year found 86% of 9-to-11-year-olds had an account on at least one platform that requires users to be 13. The existing minimums were unenforceable because no verification was required. ## The global wave 2023: Utah passes the first US state law[^src-npr-2023] requiring age verification for anyone opening a social media account, and a parent's consent for under-18s[^src-utah-state-2023]. In 2024 Utah repealed it and partly replaced it with a new act, which a federal court blocked[^src-district-court-2024] in September 2024, before it took effect; Utah has appealed[^src-courthouse-news-2025]. France passes a law requiring parental consent for users under 15; it never takes effect[^src-senat-2025], after the European Commission finds that it conflicts with the EU's Digital Services Act. 2024: Australia passes the Social Media Minimum Age law[^src-australia-2024], which requires platforms to take reasonable steps to keep under-16s from holding accounts — the first national law of its kind[^src-oecd-2026]. It does not stop a child seeing content without an account. The OECD documented a more than five-fold increase[^src-oecd-2026] in countries implementing or considering age restrictions over a 16-month period. By April 2026 the OECD counted 25 member and accession countries with age restrictions in force or under consideration — but only three (Australia, Brazil and Indonesia) had a law in force; the rest were proposals or consultations. In August 2026 France's Constitutional Council struck down a stricter measure[^src-conseil-constitutionnel-2026], a ban on social media for under-15s, as a limit on freedom of expression that was not appropriate, necessary and proportionate to its aim. > **Age verification / age assurance** > > The set of methods for establishing how old a user is — from self-declaration (a typed birthday, trivially defeated) through to document checks, facial age-estimation, or third-party verification. The central dilemma: the methods strong enough to actually work tend to require collecting identity data from _everyone_, including adults, creating a new surveillance risk in the act of protecting children. "Age assurance" is the broader term for approaches that aim to estimate age without full identification. > > **Sources** > > - [OECD, _Social media age restrictions for children_](https://www.oecd.org/en/blogs/2026/04/social-media-age-restrictions-for-children-why-they-are-rising-and-what-comes-next.html) (April 2026). ## What remains contested The age restriction wave has critics beyond the platforms. Civil liberties organisations including the ACLU warn that age verification requirements risk creating mass surveillance of adult users[^src-aclu] — requiring government ID to access social media creates a privacy problem of its own. The technical question — how to verify age without creating surveillance infrastructure — remains genuinely unsolved. The evidence on whether age restrictions improve outcomes is also thin: no country's rule has been in force long enough to evaluate. ## The honest position Age restrictions address one vector — access — without touching the design features the harms are attributed to, or the advertising business model that produces them. A 16-year-old with unrestricted access to an engagement-optimised feed is not protected by an age law. But delayed access, combined with design reform, is a lever worth testing — and the evidence on whether it moves anything will take years to arrive. **How we know — the verification-versus-surveillance trade-off, and the thin evidence base** Two honest difficulties sit under the age-restriction wave. First, the trade-off: an age check robust enough to stop a determined 14-year-old generally has to verify _everyone_, which means building identity-verification infrastructure across the whole adult population — exactly the kind of mass data collection the rest of this site describes. Privacy-preserving age-estimation exists but is imperfect and itself involves processing sensitive data (e.g. facial scans). Second, the evidence: because almost all of these laws are very new, there is little hard data on whether they actually improve children's outcomes. Australia's under-16 account rule[^src-australia-2024], in force since December 2025[^src-prime-minister-2025], is the first of its kind; Brazil and Indonesia followed[^src-oecd-2026], and none has been in force long enough to evaluate. **Where we land.** Delaying access is a plausible lever and the policy momentum is real, but on its own it leaves the harmful design and the advertising model untouched. We treat it as a partial, promising, and still-unproven measure — not a solution. ## Sources [^src-oecd-2026]: [OECD, _Social media age restrictions for children: why they are rising and what comes next_](https://www.oecd.org/en/blogs/2026/04/social-media-age-restrictions-for-children-why-they-are-rising-and-what-comes-next.html) (14 April 2026). [^src-australia-2024]: Australia, [_Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024_](https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2024A00127/asmade) — Federal Register of Legislation; s. 63D: a provider "must take reasonable steps to prevent age-restricted users having accounts", an age-restricted user being "an Australian child who has not reached 16 years". [^src-prime-minister-2025]: Prime Minister of Australia and Minister for Communications (30 July 2025), [_Albanese Government protecting kids from social media harms_](https://www.pm.gov.au/media/albanese-government-protecting-kids-social-media-harms) — "From 10 December 2025, all services that meet the definition of 'age-restricted social media platform' in the Act, and are not excluded in the rules, will be subject to the social media minimum age law." [^src-common-sense-2022]: Common Sense Media (2022), [_The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tweens and Teens, 2021_](https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/research/report/8-18-census-integrated-report-final-web_0.pdf) — 38% of 8-to-12-year-olds had used social media. [^src-mediasmarts-2022]: MediaSmarts (2022), [_Young Canadians in a Wireless World: Life Online_](https://mediasmarts.ca/press-centre/press-releases/new-research-reveals-online-lives-youth-during-pandemic) — 86% of 9-to-11-year-olds had an account on a 13+ platform. [^src-senat-2025]: Sénat, [_Rapport n° 468 (2025-2026)_](https://www.senat.fr/rap/l25-468/l25-468_mono.html) — France's 2023 parental-consent law never entered into force, after the European Commission found it encroached on the Digital Services Act. [^src-conseil-constitutionnel-2026]: Conseil constitutionnel, [_Décision n° 2026-911 DC du 14 août 2026_](https://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/decision/2026/2026911DC.htm) — the under-15 social-media ban struck down (§18). [^src-aclu]: [ACLU — challenge to Arkansas Social Media Safety Act](https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-supports-challenge-to-arkansas-law-that-places-unconstitutional-age-verification-and-parental-consent-requirements-on-social-media-users), on the constitutional problems with age-verification mandates for social media. [^src-utah-state-2023]: Utah State Legislature (2023), [_S.B. 152 Social Media Regulation Amendments_](https://le.utah.gov/~2023/bills/sbillenr/SB0152.pdf) (enrolled copy; signed 23 March 2023) — requires a social media company "to verify the age of a Utah resident seeking to maintain or open a social media account" and to obtain a parent's or guardian's consent before a Utah resident under 18 may do so. [^src-npr-2023]: NPR (24 March 2023), [_Utah passes an age-verification law for anyone using social media_](https://www.npr.org/2023/03/24/1165975112/utah-passes-an-age-verification-law-for-anyone-using-social-media) — "Utah is the first state to pass an age verification law for anyone using social media. Those under 18 must soon have parental consent." [^src-district-court-2024]: US District Court for the District of Utah (10 September 2024), [_NetChoice, LLC v. Reyes_, memorandum decision and order](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-utd-2_23-cv-00911/pdf/USCOURTS-utd-2_23-cv-00911-1.pdf) — the Utah Minor Protection in Social Media Act (2024) "partially replaces Utah's Social Media Regulation Act of 2023, which the State repealed"; the State is "PRELIMINARILY ENJOINED … from enforcing any part" of it. [^src-courthouse-news-2025]: Courthouse News Service (20 November 2025), [_Utah urges 10th Circuit to reinstate social media law for minors_](https://www.courthousenews.com/utah-urges-10th-circuit-to-reinstate-social-media-law-for-minors/) — the Tenth Circuit hears Utah's appeal against the injunction. [^src-facebook-2006]: Facebook (26 September 2006), [_Facebook Expansion Enables More People to Connect with Friends in a Trusted Environment_](https://about.fb.com/news/2006/09/facebook-expansion-enables-more-people-to-connect-with-friends-in-a-trusted-environment/) — the company's announcement of opening to anyone with a valid email address. [^src-facebook-2006-b]: Facebook (23 October 2006), [_Terms of Use_](https://web.archive.org/web/20061031142243/http://www.facebook.com/terms.php) (Internet Archive copy of 31 October 2006) — “intended solely for Users who are thirteen (13) years of age or older”; by using the site “you represent and warrant that you are 13 or older”. 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