What the eSafety Commissioner Found in 2025 — and What Parents Can Do
Between December 2024 and February 2025, the eSafety Commissioner surveyed 3,454 Australian children aged 10–17 about their online experiences. The results paint a clear picture: the threats are real, widespread, and largely invisible to parents.
The Key Findings
The research, published in 2025, found:
These are not fringe cases. These are the experiences of mainstream Australian children, on mainstream platforms, in ordinary homes.
Source: eSafety Commissioner — The Online Experiences of Children in Australia
The New Social Media Laws
As of 10 December 2025, social media platforms in Australia are legally prohibited from allowing users under 16 to create accounts. This is an important step — but enforcement relies on the platforms themselves. Given that 1.3 million under-13s were already circumventing previous age restrictions, platform-side enforcement alone is unlikely to solve the problem.
What Parents Can Do
There are practical steps every Australian family can take:
1. Use Network-Level DNS Filtering
DNS filtering works at the network level. When any device in your home tries to visit a harmful website, the request is checked against a database of known threats — and blocked before the page ever loads.
Unlike app-based controls, DNS filtering:
2. Set Per-Profile Rules
Different ages need different levels of protection. A 9-year-old and a 15-year-old should not have the same internet experience. With Manaia, you create a profile for each family member with age-appropriate content filtering, SafeSearch enforcement, and social media restrictions.
3. Get Alerted When Something Happens
The eSafety data shows most harmful encounters go unnoticed by parents. Real-time alerts mean you find out when a threat is blocked, a suspicious pattern is detected, or a concerning domain is accessed — not weeks later, not never.
The Bottom Line
The eSafety Commissioner's research is clear: Australian children are encountering cyberbullying, grooming, and harmful content at alarming rates. Platform-side enforcement is improving but incomplete. Meanwhile, Australia received over 84,700 cybercrime reports in FY2024–25 — one every 6 minutes — and identity fraud remains the number one reported cybercrime, up 8% year-on-year (ASD Annual Cyber Threat Report 2024–25). Network-level protection gives families a safety net that works regardless of what the platforms do.
Protect your family with Manaia
Network-level DNS protection for devices on your home network.