Since the start of the Under 16 social media ban in Australia in December, Meta has only removed around 250,000 accounts across Facebook and Instagram which were believed to be held by under-age users.
This figure is over and above the more than 500,000 Facebook and Instagram accounts that were removed ahead of the law coming into effect in December last year.
This means that as of June 30, Meta has removed a total of 756,000 accounts across Facebook and Instagram in Australia, which had been recognised as being used by people below the minimum age of 16.
But since the ban began in December, only 250,000 additional under-age accounts have been identified and removed.
Meta says that enforcement will continue to grow as they report directly to the e-Safety Commissioner with regular updates.
Meta says age checks are a continuous process and are carried out in several ways.
The first is powered with AI to analyse profiles, including posts and comments, for contextual clues that the account may belong to someone younger than 16.
A dead giveaway are things like birthday celebrations or mentions of school activities.
Meta also welcomes parents and the community to report a suspected underage account either through the apps or through the Help Centre for Facebook and Instagram.
And reports of underage accounts are now reviewed with AI to deliver even higher accuracy and faster resolutions.
There is also a system in place that can prevent re-registrations after a previous account had been removed.
Meta has also updated the App Store age rating for both Facebook and Instagram in the Apple App Store to 16+ in Australia.
Meta says its primary concern is that other platforms are not adopting a more consistent approach on how they are removing underage users.
The company says there should be a single reliable age signal delivered at the operating system or App Store level.
This way age could be verified once when a young person sets up their device or downloads an app rather than repeatedly across several apps that they use.
