In December 2025, Australia became the first country to ban under-16s from holding social media accounts. In June 2026, the UK confirmed it would follow the same model, and go further. And on 21 July, France became the first EU country to pass a blanket ban of its own, set to lock under-15s out of the major platforms from September.
Now, PM Christopher Luxon has unveiled the Online Safety Bill. If passed, this would legally obligate social media platforms to verify that users are at least 16 years old.
If you run a business that depends on reach from platforms like Instagram, Facebook, or Snapchat, that’s worth paying attention to.
What would New Zealand’s social media ban be like?
New Zealand’s proposed ban is intended to prevent under-16s from accessing “high risk” social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, X, Facebook, and “social AI companions”.
The ban would require social media companies to take “reasonable steps” to check that the users are over 16; these could include existing account information, facial age estimation, digital IDs, and formal IDs.
Messaging apps, educational tools, ecommerce and music services sit outside the ban, a distinction that matters when you’re thinking about which channels are actually affected.
The response has been split
Parents and educators largely support the proposal as a way to tackle online harm, like cyberbullying, harmful content and screen addiction. Teenagers see it differently. For them, social media is where they connect with friends, hobbies and communities, and many warn they’ll simply migrate to less-regulated corners of the internet or falsify their age rather than log off.
Over the ditch, Australia has had its social media ban in place for just over half a year. In April, research by Molly Rose Foundation (MRF) found that 61% of Australian 12- to 15-year-olds who had accounts before the ban still had access to at least one platform afterwards. 70% said that getting around the ban was easy, using VPNs, borrowed IDs, and workarounds to fool facial recognition.
How could a social media ban affect your business?
Even if a ban is years away here, the direction of travel has real implications for how Kiwi brands plan their digital marketing.
Your addressable audience could shrink. If a slice of under-16s disappears from Meta, TikTok and Snap, reach and targeting shift, most sharply for brands with youth or family audiences.
Attention will shift from social media platforms to messaging apps, gaming and private communities. Brands that already own their audience through email, SMS, and genuine community are far less exposed to a platform rug pull.
And age verification is coming regardless. Platforms are being pushed to collect more identity signals, which changes how audience data flows and raises the privacy bar for everyone advertising on them.
A quick readiness checklist
- Audit how much of your reach and revenue leans on under-16 or teen audiences
- Map which social media channels are most exposed if a ban lands in NZ
- Shift investment toward first-party data and owned channels you control
- Treat the Australian and UK rollouts as a live preview of what enforcement actually looks like
Where to start
Not sure how exposed your audience strategy is to all this? We can help you find out. Book a free Channel & Audience Review, a quick, no-pressure look at where your reach sits today and where it’s likely to move next.
Featured image credit: ROBIN WORRALL
