TikTok, YouTube remove 4.7m child accounts in Indonesia

JAKARTA: Social media giants TikTok and YouTube have deactivated approximately 4.7m accounts belonging to children under the age of 16 in Indonesia, the country’s communications minister announced late on Thursday.

The large-scale account removals mark the first major enforcement of Indonesia’s new social media rules.

According to Communications and Digital Minister Meutya Hafid, ByteDance’s TikTok led the purge by shutting down 4.1m accounts, while Alphabet Inc.’s video-sharing platform YouTube deactivated roughly 600,000.

Meutya emphasised that the government expects other tech giants to follow suit swiftly, noting that the ministry is currently auditing self-assessment compliance reports submitted by various platforms.

Escalating regional measures against youth digital exposure

The crackdown follows a regulatory framework introduced by Jakarta in March, which mandates that digital platforms deemed “high risk” must proactively bar users under 16.

The regulatory net has already cast a wide shadow over global tech firms, explicitly targeting platforms such as Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter), Meta’s Instagram, and the popular multiplayer gaming platform Roblox.

“We are not just delaying a child’s access, but we want behaviours from platforms to change, too,” Meutya stated, underscoring the government’s intent to enforce long-term structural changes in how Big Tech operates within Southeast Asia’s largest economy.

Indonesian authorities have maintained that these aggressive curbs are essential to mitigate the escalating risks of online cyberbullying, predatory behaviour, and digital addiction among minors.

Neither TikTok nor YouTube immediately responded to international requests for comment regarding the sudden deactivations.

A growing global shift towards age-gated internet spaces

Indonesia’s sweeping intervention reflects a rapidly intensifying global trend of legislative pushback against unrestricted social media access for minors.

Jakarta’s policy architects have drawn inspiration from Australia, which pioneered landmark legislation last year to ban social media access for young teenagers due to deep-seated concerns over adolescent mental health.

The Australian legal experiment is being closely scrutinised by global regulators as a potential blueprint for international digital governance.

Similar anxieties regarding the psychological and physical well-being of children have prompted European nations to act as well; Great Britain announced plans earlier this month to expand its own regulatory boundaries, aiming to impose stricter age-verification barriers across online gaming and live-streaming networks.