Simply weeks earlier than Australia’s social media ban for customers underneath 16 takes impact, the nation’s watchdog, eSafety, has added Twitch to the record of banned platforms.

Pinterest, nonetheless, was excluded, in keeping with Australia’s Social Media Minimal Age (SMMA) guidelines.

Twitch will not enable Australians underneath 16 to create accounts beginning December 10, a Twitch spokesperson informed TechCrunch. Current accounts for customers underneath 16 will likely be deactivated on January 9. Globally, Twitch is open to customers 13 and older, and anybody underneath the authorized age of maturity of their area should have a dad or mum or guardian concerned, the spokesperson mentioned.

Pinterest didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

Australia’s eSafety said that Twitch is categorized as an “age-restricted social media platform” as a result of the service is constructed round on-line social interplay and engagement options like live-streaming. Pinterest, however, is principally used for gathering photographs and concepts, so it isn’t included within the age-restricted guidelines.

Australia has mentioned its underage social media ban, which is able to go into impact on December 10, will apply to Meta‘s Fb, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, X, YouTube (besides YouTube Children and Google Classroom), Reddit, and the native streaming service, Kick. These platforms will likely be required to dam account entry for customers underneath 16, in response to a press release by the web regulator. 

A few yr in the past, Australia handed a regulation banning social media use for kids underneath 16. On the time, main tech corporations like Google and Meta referred to as on the federal government to delay enforcement till the nation completed its age-verification trial.

The regulator supplies a self-assessment instrument to assist platforms decide if they have to comply with the SMMA guidelines. 

Different international locations, together with the U.S. and the U.Okay., are taking comparable steps to regulate who sees what content material on the Web, although their approaches differ. Twenty-four U.S. states have to this point enacted age-verification legal guidelines as of August 2025. Utah grew to become the primary to require app shops to confirm customers’ ages and procure parental consent for minors downloading apps.

The U.Okay.’s On-line Security Act got here into impact in July, mandating social media and different on-line platforms to dam youngsters’s entry to dangerous content material or face enormous fines. The U.Okay. requires robust age checks for high-risk content material, like self-harm and consuming dysfunction content material, to guard customers underneath 18.