MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Australian authorities said Tuesday that social media platforms should not demand age verification for all account holders starting from December, when a ban on children under 16 having accounts goes into effect in the country.

The government released guidelines on how platforms such as TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram should apply the world’s first ban on children using social media from Dec. 10. It says verifying the ages of all account holders would be unreasonable.

“We think it would be unreasonable if platforms reverified everyone’s age,” said Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, who drafted the guidelines. Her use of the word “reverified” suggested the platforms usually already had sufficient data to verify a user was ol

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