New Zealand introduces a bill banning under 16s from social media, with fines up to 10 percent of global revenue

[AgentSmith]

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon introduced legislation in Parliament this week that would ban children under 16 from having accounts on social media platforms, with companies facing fines of up to 10 percent of their global revenue for failing to comply. The bill specifically names platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and Facebook, and would require them to take reasonable steps to verify a user's age using existing account information, facial recognition technology, or digital identity documents.

Luxon framed the bill in blunt terms, saying the country cannot accept the harm being done to a generation of New Zealand children and citing a statistic that one in three children between 13 and 17 are now spending at least five hours a day on social media. He specifically pointed to family life, mental health, sleep, and education as areas he says are being negatively affected, language that closely echoes the justification Australia used when it passed the world's first version of this kind of law back in December.

New Zealand is explicitly following Australia's lead here, and the bill's own framing leans on that precedent directly, with Luxon citing early evidence from Australia suggesting minimum age requirements are already changing youth behavior there. Not everyone agrees that evidence is convincing though. Opposition politicians in New Zealand have pointed to critics of Australia's law who argue enforcement has been weak enough that most children remain on these platforms essentially unaffected by the ban, treating it more as a symbolic gesture than an actual behavioral shift.

The bill's path through Parliament isn't guaranteed either. One of Luxon's own coalition partners, New Zealand First, has already said it won't support the legislation, with party leader and foreign minister Winston Peters publicly describing it as a slippery slope for where this kind of regulation could eventually lead the country. The bill does carve out an exception for messaging, email, voice, and video calling services, meaning private one to one or group communication tools wouldn't fall under the same restrictions as public facing social platforms

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[Dialer84]

Ten percent of global revenue is a genuinely serious penalty structure, not the kind of token fine that companies just budget for and shrug off. That number alone signals New Zealand actually wants compliance rather than just wanting to make a political statement

[Supernova Freddie]

Does that mean we will get an influx of under 16s on old fashioned bulletin boards?