The number arrives with the bluntness of a government tally. TikTok and YouTube have deactivated roughly 4.7 million accounts belonging to children under 16 in Indonesia, the country’s communications minister said on 25 June.

The bulk of the cuts came from one platform: TikTok deactivated 4.1 million accounts, while YouTube removed 600,000, according to Communications and Digital Minister Meutya Hafid.

The deactivations follow a rule the government issued in March, which requires social media companies operating platforms deemed high risk to remove accounts held by children under 16.

The regulation does not apply only to the two platforms named in the latest figures.

It also covers X, Meta’s Instagram, and the gaming platform Roblox, which suggests the published total is a first instalment rather than a final count.

Indonesia is a large and young market, which is part of why the policy carries weight beyond its borders.

The country has moved on child online safety with more force than most, joining a widening group that includes Norway and the UK, and the 4.7 million figure gives other governments a concrete data point on what compliance looks like when a regulator sets a hard age threshold and asks platforms to enforce it directly.

The regulation issued in March is the legal engine behind the numbers. It requires companies running platforms the government deems high risk to deactivate accounts belonging to children under 16, and it places the burden of enforcement on the platforms themselves rather than on parents or schools.

That design, a state-set threshold enforced by the companies under threat of penalty, is the same broad approach Australia has taken with its under-16 ban, and the two cases are increasingly read together as tests of whether platform-led enforcement can be made to work at national scale.

The split between the two platforms named so far is striking. TikTok’s 4.1 million deactivations dwarf YouTube’s 600,000, a gap that may reflect differences in each service’s underage user base in Indonesia, in how each identifies young accounts, or simply in how the two companies have chosen to report.

Italy’s prime minister has warned that such bans are easily dodged, a caution worth holding beside any headline deactivation count.

The government has urged platforms to disclose the number of accounts they have closed, and the figures still outstanding from X, Instagram, and Roblox will fill in the rest of the picture.

The figures come from the minister’s own account, and the companies’ published detail on how the accounts were identified is limited.

The mechanics of enforcement, whether by age declaration, behavioural signals, or other means, were not spelled out in the announcement, which leaves open the same question that has dogged similar measures elsewhere: how many barred users simply return under a new account and an older stated age.

What the government has disclosed is the headline. TikTok 4.1 million, YouTube 600,000, and a regulation that still has several large platforms left to report. The next numbers, from X, Instagram, and Roblox, will show whether the pattern holds.