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Indonesia blocks 4.8 million underage social media accounts but are kids any safer?

Indonesia’s attempt to keep children aged under 16 off social media platforms deemed high risk has quickly become one of the world’s biggest tests of…

By Samantha Johnson / July 9, 2026
Indonesia’s attempt to keep children aged under 16 off social media platforms deemed high risk has quickly become one of the world’s biggest tests of online safety regulation, with more than 4.8 million suspected underage accounts removed or deactivated in the first three months of enforcement.
For President Prabowo Subianto’s government, the figures are an early sign that major platforms are falling in line with its policy aimed at making the digital world safer for children. Communications and Digital Affairs Minister Meutya Hafid called TikTok’s first reported removals in April “an early victory for the public, parents, children in Indonesia and us”.

But analysts and digital rights advocates say the real question is not how many accounts have disappeared, but whether those removals can be verified and if they have actually made children safer online.

By late June, the figures reported by platforms to Indonesia’s Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs (Komdigi) included about 4.1 million suspected underage accounts on TikTok, 600,000 on YouTube and 185,000 on Meta’s Facebook, Instagram and Threads.

Indonesia’s Communication and Digital Affairs Minister Meutya Hafid is interviewed at her official residence in Jakarta on May 6. Photo: AFP
Indonesia’s Communication and Digital Affairs Minister Meutya Hafid is interviewed at her official residence in Jakarta on May 6. Photo: AFP

Yet the same numbers that have given the government early compliance headlines also expose the central weakness of the policy, critics say: enforcement depends heavily on platforms to identify underage users, report their own compliance and decide how age checks should work.

“Honestly, the 4.8 million figure looks like enforcement, but what it really shows is dependence,” said Ika Idris, a Monash University Indonesia public policy scholar who researches social media analytics and digital platform policy. “Right now, ‘enforcement’ means platforms grading their own homework and the regulator accepting the grade.”

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