The news: Consumer sentiment is aligning with stricter child safety enforcement on social platforms.

• At least 60% of US adults support every major child safety measure, per CivicScience, including strong backing for bans on child data collection (74%) and mandatory parental consent for account creation (71%).
• About 60% support limiting the time that kids can be logged in, restricting ads served to kids, and giving parents access to their children’s accounts.
• Required age verification for all users is the most divisive measure, but 61% still support it and only 17% oppose it.

Why it matters: To comply with Australia’s under-16 social media ban, Meta has shut down about 550,000 accounts across Instagram, Facebook, and Threads that it identified as belonging to children, marking a more aggressive approach to age enforcement globally.

Consumer attitudes and Meta’s enforcement actions show that tighter restrictions on youth access are no longer hypothetical. Platforms are increasingly willing, and perhaps politically pressured, to limit minors’ presence.

However, once implemented, issues that arise for adults from age-gating may contribute to the decline in support across the board for child safety measures since CivicScience’s 2023 survey.

The challenge: These policies could reduce the size of addressable youth audiences and change how brands reach, target, and engage with younger consumers online.

That could be especially important considering the purchasing power of Gen Alpha, or those born between 2010 and 2024. The demographic influences almost half of household spending decisions in the US and UK. In the US alone, that spending power adds up to $255 billion, per Teneo.

Recommendations for brands: Brands that rely on youth reach should prepare for shrinking access to teen audiences, tighter ad controls, and more scrutiny around brand safety and compliance.

That could mean reallocating budgets toward contextual or interest-based targeting, investing more in creator partnerships and offline channels, and reevaluating how to build early brand affinity without direct access to kids’ accounts.