Wyatt Thompson was locked out of YouTube once Australia’s landmark under-16s social media ban was activated on December 10, but the 11-year-old from Broken Hill has not been forced offline.

“It hasn’t helped me stop using my electronics … I still use them the same amount, but I just go on to Netflix or listen to stuff on Spotify now,” Wyatt says.

His YouTube account was one of the 4.7 million accounts deactivated by eight tech giants in the purge mandated by the Albanese government a month ago, when Australia became the first nation to ban children under 16 from holding or creating accounts on 10 age-restricted platforms.

Wyatt Thompson, 11, lives in Broken Hill, and has lost access to YouTube. He says he spends the same amount of time online despite the ban. Credit: Em Jensen

The government’s social media watchdog, eSafety, has declined to release a breakdown of the figures, and only Meta has provided its own numbers: 544,052 accounts on Facebook, Instagram and Threads understood to belong to under 16s were shut down between December 4 and December 11.

The government estimates that 95 per cent of teens under 16 and 84 per cent of children aged eight to 12 – about 2.3 million users........

© The Sydney Morning Herald