Australia has raised the maximum fine for social media companies that fail to keep children under 16 off their platforms from AUD $49.5 million to AUD $99 million, according to news reports from 27 June 2026.

The fine applies when a company shows a clear pattern of letting underage users through — not just one kid slipping past the system, but evidence that the company hasn't built or enforced age-checking properly at scale. That difference matters. One fake account is treated differently from a platform that has plainly failed to stop a flood of underage signups.

The Law Behind It

Australia passed the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024 in November 2024, adding a new rule to an existing online safety law. The new rule: anyone under 16 cannot have a social media account in Australia. One of the government agencies responsible for enforcing this is the eSafety Commissioner, which can take companies to court and seek fines if they break the rule.

The old maximum fine was about AUD $49.5 million. The new one is double that — AUD $99 million. Australia's new fine is larger than most other countries impose for the same type of problem, though the European Union's system (the Digital Services Act) can go much higher for the very biggest platforms because it calculates fines as a percentage of a company's total earnings.

What This Means in Practice

The eSafety Commissioner is still the agency that enforces the rule, and the fine doesn't change what breaks the law. What changes is how much money a company risks if caught. For Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube, AUD $99 million hurts but won't put them out of business. The real purpose is a message: regulators are willing to keep raising fines until companies take the rule seriously and invest in actually checking ages.

We have seen this pattern before. Governments start with low fines. Companies don't change behaviour much. Then governments raise the fines. Australia is moving faster through that cycle than many countries have.

The tricky part is age checking itself. How do you confirm someone's age online without collecting too much personal information or invading privacy? There is no perfect answer yet. The law punishes companies for failing to try, but what counts as a true failure — versus just missing a few out of millions — will need clear rules that the eSafety Commissioner will have to set by taking companies to court and winning.

Australia is showing it is serious about protecting children online, and this fine increase makes that position clear in dollar terms. But fines on paper only work if enforcement follows. If the eSafety Commissioner actually takes companies to court over this, platforms will spend money on age verification. If enforcement stays quiet, companies will spend less. The gap between a law and its enforcement is where real decisions get made inside tech companies.

The new fine is officially in place. The next real test is whether the eSafety Commissioner uses it.