Australia officially rewrote the rules of youth marketing.
As of December 2025, the country’s Social Media Minimum Age law restricts children under 16 from holding accounts on major social platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, X, and YouTube. Platforms that fail to enforce this policy face penalties of up to AUD $49.5 million, making this more than a symbolic shift. It’s a structural change in how reach, targeting, and measurement work for brands engaging younger audiences.
Before the ban, an estimated 624,000 Australians ages 14–15 were active on social media platforms, making logged-in social targeting a central pillar of many youth-focused media plans. That pillar is now gone.
But what matters most for marketers isn’t what disappeared, but what didn’t. Teen attention didn’t vanish. The mechanics of reaching it simply changed.
For brands that relied heavily on social platforms to reach younger audiences, the impact is immediate.
First, optimisation becomes significantly harder. Campaigns can no longer rely on age-based profiles that legally can’t exist. Age assurance systems add friction, cost, and delivery delays without restoring the same level of precision.
Second, reporting becomes less reliable. As platforms adapt, a growing share of impressions is classified as unknown age, making it harder to validate reach or outcomes for youth-focused campaigns.
Third, risk increases. Brands that continue operating as if nothing’s changed face reputational exposure and regulatory scrutiny, particularly in categories already sensitive to youth audiences.
This has real implications across industries, from gaming and entertainment to youth fashion, QSR, and snack brands that historically leaned on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube for discovery and momentum.
When teens lose access to personal social accounts, they don’t stop consuming content. They change how and where they consume it.
Streaming platforms, broadcast video-on-demand, and Connected TV (CTV) environments continue to play a central role in teens’ daily media habits. YouTube alone previously reached more than 90% of Australian teens. That viewing behaviour doesn’t disappear simply because their social media log-ins do.
What changes is the context.
Instead of staring at their personal screens, viewers shift to shared environments, particularly the living room, where content is consumed on the family TV and often co-viewed with parents or siblings. For marketers, this reframes youth reach from an individual profile problem to a household attention opportunity.
The brands adapting most effectively to these changes aren’t looking for workarounds. They’re redesigning their strategy around privacy-forward, household-level signals. This includes:
Rather than relying on individual-level identifiers, marketers can focus on geographic and household signals, such as postcodes with higher concentrations of families. This aligns targeting with real-world context instead of fragile platform profiles.
CTV offers reach within premium, brand-safe environments that families actively choose. Large-screen viewing drives attention, trust, and recall, especially compared to crowded mobile feeds. Industry research consistently shows CTV delivering higher brand awareness and recall lift than traditional digital placements.
CTV exposure can extend across the web and mobile using household-level signals. This enables sequential messaging and full-funnel measurement without requiring a teen to be logged in or individually identified.
With individual youth clicks no longer viable, success should be evaluated through branded search lift, store visits, app installs, and location-based performance trends. These metrics provide a clearer picture of real impact than age-segmented engagement ever did.
Connected TV isn’t just a replacement channel for social media. In many ways, it’s better suited to this new reality.
CTV operates in premium, trusted environments alongside long-form content. Ads command more attention, with viewers watching for several seconds rather than scrolling past in fractions of a second.
Co-viewing also matters. About 86% of internet users worldwide use another device while watching TV, which supports the idea that second-screen behaviour is mainstream.
Most importantly, CTV allows brands to operate with respect for privacy, context, and consent while still reaching meaningful scale.
This isn’t the end of youth marketing in Australia. It’s the end of running it on autopilot.
If your 2026 plan still assumes you can reach teens the same way you did in 2024, it needs a rethink. Australia is likely a preview of where other markets are heading as regulators focus more closely on youth protection and data usage.
The one screen that never lost permission is still doing what it’s always done. It brings households together. It commands attention. It influences decisions.
That screen is the TV in the living room.
Brands that adapt now will build more resilient, future-proof strategies grounded in attention, trust, and outcomes that actually move the business.
The question is no longer whether youth marketing can survive this shift.
The question is whether your strategy is ready for it.
Last updated on January 2nd, 2026.