Australia’s House of Representatives has passed a bill that would ban children younger than 16 years from social media.

Australia moved closer on Wednesday to banning social media for children under 16 after the parliament's lower house passed a bill even as Alphabet's Google and Facebook-owner Meta pressed the government to delay the legislation.

Australian lawmakers moved a step closer to banning under 16s from social media platforms Wednesday, threatening companies that fail to comply with multimillion-dollar fines.