What Australia’s social media ban means for the next generation of media planning

In December 2025, Australia became the first country in the world to enforce a nationwide ban on under-16s holding accounts on major social media platforms. The move is reshaping how young people spend time online – and forcing marketers to think beyond the default scroll of social feeds.

The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024, requires platforms to exclude users under the age of 16, and companies that fail to comply face penalties of up to AUD $50 million.

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The early impact has been significant. Within weeks of enforcement, Meta reported suspending around 550,000 accounts, and millions of under-16 profiles have been removed across platforms. While the move has raised questions about enforcement, privacy, and youth wellbeing, it’s clear this legislation represents a major shift in how younger audiences access the internet. And that shift has natural implications for brands that have long relied on social media to reach Gen Z and the emerging Gen Alpha.

For brands still running last year's media mix, that is both a compliance risk and a reach gap. 

According to Newzoo, 94% of Gen Alpha and 86% of Gen Z actively play games. Brands that are not in gaming are not reaching them.

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How the new rules really work

For media planners, the key takeaway is that the restriction sits at the platform level. If companies fail to enforce age requirements, they risk significant financial penalties. 

For brands, this all raises a strategic question: if traditional social platforms become harder to use to reach younger audiences, where is their attention going instead?

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Young audiences haven’t just disappeared

One common assumption is that restrictions like this will push younger users offline, but the evidence suggests something else entirely. Young people have not stopped spending time online. Instead, their attention is flowing toward interactive, immersive and community‑driven environments. Increasingly, that includes gaming.

According to Newzoo, there are now 3.3 billion gamers globally, making gaming one of the largest entertainment ecosystems in the world. Younger audiences are heavily represented within that number. In Australia, 82% of under-17s are gamers. For Gen Z and Gen Alpha, gaming environments are not just a ‘place to play’ - they serve as social spaces, creative outlets and full-on entertainment hubs.

Minecraft, Roblox and Fortnite function as digital gathering places where players build worlds, collaborate with friends, attend virtual events and spend hours immersed in shared experiences. In Australia, 77% of people play video games with others, and 27% have made new friends, showing that these environments already serve many of the functions traditionally associated with social media.

For marketers, this is important, because if audiences are spending their time in environments, effective media strategies need to follow.

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Gaming isn’t a backup - it’s a backbone

Despite gaming’s enormous audience, it remains under-utilised in most media plans and the gap between audience attention and advertising investment represents a significant opportunity.

Engagement data reinforces this: Research backed by IAB Australia shows that in-game advertising delivers around 20 times more engagement than traditional digital formats. Unlike many feed-based placements that users quickly scroll past, in-game ads are integrated into environments where players are actively focused and highly attentive.

This attention dynamic is one of gaming’s most powerful advantages. Gaming is not a background activity like a Youtube video can be. When players are immersed in a game, their engagement is deliberate, and advertising delivered within that context can feel more natural and less disruptive than traditional display formats.

And unlike a social click that bounces to a browser tab and gets abandoned, gaming environments meet audiences in the moment rather than redirecting them out of it. The data shows where that attention increasingly goes: Gen Alpha now spends more time in games (5.2 hours per week) than on social media (5.1 hours). Gaming has become the preferred environment for how they connect, and with shoppable ad formats now available in-game, that preference translates directly into a purchase opportunity. No redirect, no drop-off.

The regulatory dimension is also key. While social media platforms are now subject to strict age restrictions in Australia, gaming environments are not currently captured by the same legislation. That means they remain a compliant and brand-safe part of the media mix for reaching younger audiences in ways that align with evolving regulatory expectations and platform policies.

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Rethinking the youth media mix

For brands that rely heavily on social media to reach younger demographics, Australia’s new law represents a moment to reassess the broader media mix. The key insight is simple: the audience has not vanished. It has moved.

Gen Z and Gen Alpha are spending substantial time in gaming environments where they interact with friends, watch content, build communities and participate in shared digital experiences. For many of them, these environments already fulfill roles that social media once dominated.

From a marketing perspective, in-game environments offer measurable reach, strong engagement metrics and opportunities for creative brand integration that go beyond traditional banner advertising. Yet adoption is still at a relatively early stage. With only a small proportion of media budgets currently directed toward gaming, brands that explore the channel now have the potential to gain a meaningful first-mover advantage.

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Turning disruption into advantage

The immediate takeaway from Australia’s under-16 social media ban is less about restriction and more about adaptation.

Digital audiences evolve quickly. Platforms rise, shift and change, often faster than media strategies do. The brands that succeed are usually the ones willing to follow their audiences and gaming is already one of the largest, most engaged digital ecosystems in the world. For younger audiences in particular, it represents a space where social interaction, entertainment and creativity converge.

The opportunity for marketers is not simply to replace lost reach from social media. It's to recognise that the next generation of audience engagement is already taking shape in new environments, and to start measuring what's actually working there. iion's Attention Advantage research, which analysed over 9 million gaming ad impressions, shows that the data already exists to plan, buy and prove performance in gaming with the same rigour as any other channel. Hear more about the research in IAB Australia podcast.

The audience has moved. The tools are there. The question now is whether media plans will catch up.

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