Australia Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Monday social media firms would be required to destroy personal data used to verify ages of users, as part of what the government says is a world-leading ban on under-16s using the services.

Australia is all set to pass a bill in Parliament this week that aims to ban social media for children under 16 and proposed fines of up to $32 million for social media platforms for systemic breaches.

An advocate for major social media platforms has told Australia's Parliament that a plan to ban children younger than 16 from the sites should be delayed rather than being rushed to approval this week

The legislation would impose fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars ($33 million) on platforms for systemic failures to prevent young children from holding accounts.

Sunita Bose, managing director of Digital Industry Group Inc., an advocate for the digital industry in Australia including X, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, was answering questions at a single-day Senate committee hearing into world-first legislation that was introduced into the Parliament last week.

After the law is implemented, a fine of nearly 50 million Australian dollars ($33 million) will be imposed on social media platforms for failing to stop children from accessing it

The laws would impact Meta Platforms' Instagram and Facebook, Bytedance's TikTok and Elon Musk's X and Snapchat. The proposals are the highest age limit set by any country, and would have no exemption for parental consent and no exemption for pre-existing accounts.