81% of Australians use Facebook and half say it harms democracy

Facebook's reach gap

Pew Research Center's figures, drawn from 42,151 adults surveyed across 36 countries between 8 February and 13 May 2026, show Australia remains a Facebook market in a way planners sometimes understate. Eight in ten Australian adults, 81%, say they use Facebook, twelve points above the 37-country median of 69%.^[1] Instagram sits at 59%, also above its 51% global median.

TikTok tells a different story. Only 27% of Australian adults report using TikTok, against a 40% global median, a thirteen-point gap that narrows its claim as a mass-reach vehicle on any media plan.^[1] X sits at 19%, exactly in line with the 18% global median. Facebook commands an audience that no other single platform comes close to matching in Australia right now.

The democracy numbers brand-safety teams need to read

Fifty-two per cent of Australians say social media has been bad for democracy, against a 37-country median of just 35%.^[2] Australia sits in a seven-country bloc where a majority of adults hold that view, alongside the United States at 64%, France at 65%, the Netherlands at 70%, Germany at 61%, the United Kingdom at 56% and Canada at 55%. Globally, 55% of adults say social media has been good for democracy, putting Australia squarely against the grain.

That 52% figure sits on a platform used by 81% of Australian adults. A buyer planning a Facebook-heavy schedule in Australia is working with a platform whose own users express measurably more scepticism about its effects than users do in most countries Pew surveyed. Standard reach-and-frequency planning carries no variable for whether that background cynicism changes how sponsored content lands.

Planning after the under-16 ban

Pew fielded these surveys in the months immediately after Australia's under-16 social media law took effect. From 10 December 2025, age-restricted platforms have been required to take reasonable steps to prevent Australians under 16 from holding accounts.^[4] eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said platforms had already restricted access to 4.7 million under-16 accounts.

Inman Grant said "I am very pleased with these preliminary results" and that "It is clear that eSafety's regulatory guidance and engagement with platforms is already delivering significant outcomes."^[5] Electronic Frontiers Australia has argued that any workable age-assurance system effectively identifies everyone on a platform to verify that most are over the threshold, a structural concern the Commissioner's release does not address.

Public sentiment runs firmly behind the policy. Eighty-two per cent of Australian adults surveyed between 30 March and 13 April 2026 said they support restricting under-16 access to social media, including 51% who said they strongly support it.^[3] Support climbs with age: 73% among 18 to 29-year-olds, 80% among 30 to 49-year-olds, 85% among 50 to 64-year-olds, and 89% among those aged 65 and over. Women support the ban at 85%; men at 79%.

The gap between Australian and US opinion on the same question is 26 percentage points, 82% in Australia against 56% in the United States, which puts the ban in different political soil here than in the country where most of the platforms were built.^[3] For media buyers, the practical read is a maturing audience on every major platform as younger cohorts cycle through the new account-restriction regime.