Social media age verification failure - 28 January 2026

The Albanese Labor Government’s implementation of the under 16’s social media ban is a shambles. In an extraordinary admission, Snapchat’s age verification provider has confirmed it is not checking whether the face scanned matches the gender or age details provided for the account.

Shadow Minister for Communications, Melissa McIntosh MP said, “Despite declaring more than 4.7 million accounts for young people had been deactivated, the age verification technology used by platforms is failing. Kids are using the facial scans of adults to bypass the age verification checks or create new accounts with fake ages.

“The Albanese Government’s own Age Assurance Technology Trial advised the tools were immature and were providing inaccurate age estimations,” said Mrs McIntosh.

“The platforms aren’t even doing basic checks to see if the genders match or if the age put in to create a new account is close to the facial scan being used. There are no checks and balances in place, this is nothing but a tick the box exercise.

“All you have to do is go to your local shopping centre to see that the kids are still on their social media accounts, posting selfies on Snapchat and their Instagram accounts – they certainly aren’t riding bikes, reading books or learning to play an instrument.

“The Prime Minister said success would equal a national conversation, well the only conversation being had by parents is that this has been a total flop – and an expensive one at that.

“It’s been nearly two months and all we have seen is PR stunts from the Prime Minister riding a bicycle and tokenistic claims of success.

“The Albanese Government’s failure to release the details of the data for the closure of the 4.7 million accounts was yet another transparency failure proving even they know this hasn’t worked.

“The national conversation the Prime Minister wanted is not one of success, but world-wide embarrassment.

“This hasn’t stopped kids accessing social media, reduced online harm or made the online world safer. Continuing to defend the botched implementation of this helps no one, least of all the kids it claims to be trying to protect. They need to stop worrying about bike riding photo shoots and start fixing the problem.

“We all want our kids to be safer online but the only way we can do that is if the Government is transparent about it. The Snapchat revelations today are very concerning, and the Minister for Communications needs to explain what will be done to fix this loophole.”