TikTok, YouTube deactivates 4.7m under-16 accounts in Indonesia

TikTok has deactivated 4.1 million accounts belonging to children under 16 in Indonesia, with YouTube removing an additional 600,000, according to Communications and Digital Minister Meutya Hafid.

The coordinated enforcement follows a March 2026 regulation targeting high-risk platforms and Jakarta's aggressive approach to youth digital safety.

Indonesia's March regulation ordered social media companies classified as being at high risk to block the accounts of users below 16 years of age. This has had implications for social media apps such as TikTok, YouTube, Instagram (by Meta), X (formerly Twitter), and even video game platform Roblox.

According to Hafid, the ministry is still analysing their self-assessment reports and hopes that others will do the same soon.

"We're not just delaying a child's access, but we want behaviours from platforms to change, too," said Meutya on Thursday.

The country is justifying these measures as crucial ones for countering cyberbullying, addiction, and poor mental health conditions among young people. The country believes that algorithm-driven feeds and social comparison cause psychological damage that cannot be countered by content filtering measures, a similar explanation was offered by Australia when it introduced a ban on usage by under-16s last December despite an 85% survival rate of teenagers who bypassed the ban using alternative measures.

This month, Britain has gone even further and extended the regulatory regime to gaming and live streaming platforms.

Unlike Australia's blanket ban approach, Indonesia employs platform-specific regulation tied to risk assessment. High-risk designations require active account deactivation rather than relying solely on user age verification during sign-up.