0 of 50: Australia’s Failed Age Checks Play Havoc with Youth Ad Targeting

For marketers, accurate age gating is the bedrock of compliant ad targeting. Australia’s new law requiring platforms to bar under‑16s was meant to create a safer environment, but a new study reveals that not a single test account was asked for age verification. This means youth‑targeted ad campaigns are either reaching an unintended audience or failing to reach their demographic, while brands face potential legal exposure.

Australia's trailblazing attempt to ban teenagers from social media has collided with a fundamental enforcement failure: age verification isn't even being triggered at the initial gate. A study by software testing firm KJR — the same firm that advised the government on implementing the curbs — found that out of 50 test accounts opened after the law took effect in December 2025, not a single one was asked for proof of age. The study, previously unreported and shared with Reuters, reveals that while much attention has been paid to the accuracy of photo‑based age‑assurance tools, the far more basic step of flagging a user for verification based on platform activity simply isn't happening.

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All 50 accounts are active and spread across nine of the ten platforms subject to the law, including Meta’s Instagram, Snap’s Snapchat, TikTok, and Alphabet’s YouTube, according to Andrew Hammond, director at KJR.

The legislation, a world first, requires platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube to bar anyone under 16 from holding an account. Operators must take "reasonable steps" to comply, with the government recommending multiple checks. Yet KJR’s testers set up accounts declaring an age of 16 — the threshold — and none faced any age‑related scrutiny. All 50 accounts are active and spread across nine of the ten platforms subject to the law, including Meta’s Instagram, Snap’s Snapchat, TikTok, and Alphabet’s YouTube, according to Andrew Hammond, director at KJR. Disturbingly, some dummy accounts received advertisements for youth banking products, a clear sign that the platforms did estimate the users were in a young age bracket but elected not to act on that intelligence.

This gap in the first layer of age gating renders the entire regulatory regime toothless. If platforms cannot reliably identify which users should be challenged, the subsequent multi‑check process never starts. The government has publicly acknowledged widespread non‑compliance: studies have shown most under‑16s still access the platforms, leading Canberra to double the maximum fine last month and warn of potential court action against tech giants. Yet the KJR data suggests the problem is not one of technology precision but of basic operationalisation — the platforms are not even attempting to verify age at scale.

For the social media industry, the stakes are enormous. The Australian law is being watched globally as a test case; similar proposals are percolating in Europe, the US, and Asia. A visible failure here could embolden other regulators to demand stricter, more invasive measures, or alternatively give platforms ammunition to argue that age‑based bans are unworkable. The fact that the platforms seem to bypass their own age‑estimation engines when it counts raises questions about whether they have a genuine commercial incentive to enforce the ban, given that under‑16 users represent valuable engagement and advertising inventory.

The implications ripple into the advertising ecosystem. Age targeting is a cornerstone of digital ad campaigns, especially for brands marketing products like games, fashion, or youth banking. If platforms are not accurately filtering users by age, marketers face three risks: their ads may be shown to an unintended audience, they may miss their intended demographic, or they may inadvertently violate brand‑safety rules that bar advertising of certain products to minors. The appearance of youth banking ads on test accounts declared as 16 underscores the irony: the platforms’ own ad‑targeting algorithms have enough data to infer age, yet that data is not fed into the compliance machinery.