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.

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

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.