How Australia’s Banking Sector Might Become the Gatekeeper for Teen Social Media Use

Australia is pushing into uncharted territory. Starting December 10, 2025, the country’s new law will ban children under 16 from maintaining social media accounts. To pull that off, regulators are testing a novel two-layer verification system: ConnectID, a banking-based identity tool, working alongside Singapore’s k-ID, which estimates age from facial data. The aim? To build a system that works and protects privacy. 

What’s at stake

The idea behind the legislation, formally the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024, is to force big platforms TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube, and X to prevent users under 16 from accessing or holding accounts unless they go through age assurance steps. Platforms face fines of up to AUD 50 million if they fail to take “reasonable steps” to comply.

But proving someone is under or over 16 isn’t trivial. Facial estimation tools (i.e., using selfies or images to guess age) tend to decline in accuracy near age cutoffs, particularly around 16. Selfies are messy—light, angle, ethnicity, skin tone all introduce error. Australia’s regulators and industry agree that a backup or supplementary system is needed. That’s where ConnectID comes in.

How ConnectID + k-ID works

ConnectID is backed by Australia’s major banks (via Australian Payments Plus). It allows someone to use their bank account data as a trusted identity provider: the system can issue an anonymous “over/under” signal for certain age thresholds based on bank records, without exposing full personal details. Consent is required.

K-ID brings the facial age estimation component: using algorithms to estimate age from images. The two together are being trialed by some social media companies in Australia. They may be offered as a bundled approach (“two-tier”) or separately, depending on what platforms need.

Challenges & the balancing act

There are sharp trade-offs. Privacy advocates warn that age verification systems can overreach. The government has explicitly said it does not want every user to re-verify their age all the time, or require a government ID in all cases. They want solutions that are “minimally invasive.”

Moreover, accuracy near the cutoff age (16) is a sticking point. Trials so far suggest facial estimation works, but sometimes misclassifies users near that threshold. That’s risky: misclassifying a 15-year-old could bar them inappropriately; misclassifying a 17-year-old could let someone bypass protections. The layered approach helps: if one method is uncertain, the other might verify.

One industry analyst, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “No system will be perfect, but combining bank-based verification with image-based estimation gives platforms a fighting chance at meeting legal standards without overburdening users.”

What this means going forward

For everyday people, teens, parents, and social media users, this could change how logging in works. Platforms may ask for new forms of verification or offer alternate paths (bank login vs selfies vs IDs). For platforms, there’s pressure to avoid errors and privacy pitfalls.

More broadly, Australia is positioning itself as a global experiment ground for how democracies can regulate online youth safety. If ConnectID + k-ID succeeds, other countries might emulate this model. But if things go wrong, privacy abuses, false positives, and exclusion of minors without access to banks, the backlash could be heavy.

In conclusion, Australia’s under-16 social media ban isn’t just about taking platforms to task; it’s about testing whether identity and age assurance technologies can be both effective and respectful of privacy. The trial run of ConnectID and k-ID may not solve every problem. But as regulation sweeps the world, they might offer a blueprint.

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