A dance teacher from Hobart has found herself locked out of Meta business accounts as Australia’s pioneering under-16 social media ban takes effect. The 30-year-old mother of three says her small business was thriving online until the ban kicked in, with Instagram first restricting access on the evening the policy began.
Cronk reports that her personal Facebook and Instagram accounts, along with her business pages, were all disabled by Wednesday night. She received a notification claiming she was under the age of 16 and urged to verify her age. Despite submitting multiple documents — including a driver’s license, a bank card, and a passport — her age verification was rejected.
Unlike her TikTok account, which appears unaffected so far, Cronk suspects the blocks stem from content on her personal pages (photos of her children) and the material on her business pages (dance students and classes).
Even though she had already shifted much of her business to other platforms in anticipation of the ban, Cronk kept running paid advertisements on Facebook and Instagram because those ads had proven effective. She worries that losing access to the Meta business login is the real danger, since the ads — about $250 weekly — cannot be halted if she cannot log in to disable them. In addition, she fears being unable to respond to inquiries generated by those ads.
Legal assistance has been suggested as a way to verify identity, but Cronk says the advice to hire a lawyer is impractical for a small business owner who is also a mom of three. She has reached out to various channels, but the recommended next step remains costly and inaccessible to her. Federal MP Julie Collins has offered help, and Cronk says both Collins’s office and Meta have been contacted for comment.
