Australian government to limit YouTube for kids under 16

The Australian government is including YouTube in its planned social media restriction for children under 16, saying platforms that don’t comply will be fined millions of dollars.

The government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, leader of Australia’s center-left Labor Party, announced the move Wednesday, also targeting X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and other platforms.

It’s the world’s first social media restriction for kids under 16 and goes into effect on Dec. 10.

Companies that don’t take “responsible steps to prevent underage account holders onto their services” will be fined up to $32 million, Mr. Albanese’s office said.

YouTube initially avoided the constraint until Australia’s internet regulator recommended that the Albanese government reverse course. 

The regulator found in a survey that, among children who had seen “potentially harmful content,” 37% of them saw it most recently on YouTube or were most affected by content coming from the video giant.

A YouTube spokesperson told Reuters that “our position remains clear: YouTube is a video sharing platform with a library of free, high-quality content, increasingly viewed on TV screens. It’s not social media.”

Australian children under 16 will still be allowed to view videos, but without an account they can’t upload their own or interact with other YouTube users.

Under the law, a website or service is considered an age-restricted social media platform if it lets users interact with each other and post their own material.