MELBOURNE, Australia — In a move to bolster online safety for minors, Australia will require social media platforms to submit monthly reports detailing the number of children’s accounts they have closed. This new regulation, enforcing a minimum age limit of 16, is set to take effect next week, a government official announced on Wednesday.

Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X, and YouTube are among the platforms that, starting December 10, risk facing fines up to 50 million Australian dollars (approximately $33 million) if they do not actively work to remove accounts belonging to Australian users under the age of 16. Recently, the livestreaming platform Twitch was also added to this list of age-restricted services.

The Australian eSafety Commissioner plans to issue formal notices to these 10 platforms on December 11, requesting data on account removals. This will initiate a series of monthly notices, which will continue for a period of six months to ensure compliance.

“The government understands that implementing age verification measures may take several days or even weeks to execute both fairly and accurately,” Communications Minister Anika Wells stated at the National Press Club of Australia.

“The government recognizes that age assurance may require several days or weeks to complete fairly and accurately,” Communications Minister Anika Wells told the National Press Club of Australia.

“However, if eSafety identifies systemic breaches of the law, the platforms will face fines,” she added. The eSafety regulator said a court would apply the penalty up to the maximum if the platform had repeated violations.

Google said Wednesday that anyone in Australia under 16 would be signed out of its platform YouTube from Dec. 10 and lose features accessible only to account holders such as playlists.

Google would determine YouTube account holders’ ages based on personal data contained in associated Google accounts and other signals.

“We have consistently said this rushed legislation misunderstands our platform, the way young Australians use it and, most importantly, it does not fulfill its promise to make kids safer online,” a Google statement said.

Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads, said suspected young children will be removed from those platforms from Thursday.

Account holders 16 and older who were mistakenly removed could contact Yoti Age Verification and verify their age by providing government-issued IDs or a video selfie, Meta said.

The Sydney-based rights group Digital Freedom Project is hoping the High Court will issue an injunction preventing the law from taking effect next week.

A court hearing date had not been set by Wednesday.

“Over the coming months, we will fight to defend this law in the High Court because parents … right across Australia asked for government to step up,” Wells said.

Last month, the Malaysian government said it would ban social media accounts for children younger than 16 from 2026.

Wells said the European Commission, France, Denmark, Greece, Romania and New Zealand were also interesting in setting a minimum age for social media.