A law is only as strong as the door it actually closes, and Australia's ban on social media for under-16s appears to have left a window open. On 26 June, six months after the world-first measure took effect, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he was keen to make the ban as strong as possible, after a new study found it had done little to keep teenagers off the platforms it targets.
The study, published in the British Medical Journal, is the awkward part. It found that 85% of Australians aged 12 to 15 were still using social media three months after the ban began.
Two-thirds of underage users stayed online by the simplest means available, declaring an age over 16, or posting a selfie that the platform's system accepted as belonging to someone older. The gate exists. Teenagers have largely walked around it.
The government's response is to harden enforcement rather than rewrite the rule. Canberra plans to stress-test the law, which bars platforms including Meta's Instagram and Google's YouTube from giving accounts to under-16s.
A central focus, Albanese indicated, is making sure the eSafety Commission, the country's internet regulator, is sufficiently empowered to do the job it has been handed.
The regulator had already said Meta, TikTok, and YouTube were not complying with the ban.
That regulator is not waiting quietly. The eSafety Commission and Communications Minister Anika Wells have said they are preparing legal action against multiple platforms.
Companies found to have systemically failed to uphold the ban face a maximum penalty of A$49.5m, around $34m, a figure large enough to concentrate corporate attention without being large enough to threaten the businesses it applies to.
The numbers in the study sharpen the case the government is trying to make. The BMJ paper suggests the rule has changed where teenagers say they are rather than where they actually are.
An age limit that depends on a user honestly entering a date of birth, or on an algorithm correctly guessing an age from a selfie, is an age limit with an obvious soft spot, and two-thirds of underage users appear to have found it.
Australia's position as the first mover gives the experiment an audience well beyond its own borders. Governments in Europe and elsewhere have floated similar age thresholds.
Norway moved to follow Australia with its own under-16 ban, the UK has weighed comparable restrictions, and several have watched Canberra to see whether a hard ban can be made to work in practice rather than only on the statute book.
The early evidence is mixed enough to be useful to both camps: proof that a law can be passed and platforms compelled to act, and proof that passing the law is the easier half of the problem. Italy's prime minister has gone further, cautioning that such bans are easily dodged.
The deeper problem is the one the BMJ paper exposes: an age limit enforced largely by self-declaration is an age limit enforced largely on trust. Australia legislated first, ahead of the rest of the world, and is now discovering in public what enforcement of such a law actually requires.
Other governments watching the experiment will have noted both the ambition and the gap between the rule and the result.
What comes next is procedural. Legal action against named platforms, a review of the eSafety Commission's powers, and, presumably, a second study to measure whether tougher enforcement moves the 85% figure at all. The ban is six months old. The question of whether it works is still open.