The Children’s Online Privacy Code in Australia will establish a set of guidelines to improve children’s privacy and will apply to social media services, relevant electronic services and designated internet services where they are likely to be accessed by children. This policy briefing explores a discussion held by 13 experts from academia and civil society in July 2025 around how the ‘likely to be accessed’ (LTBA) standard might be operationalised in the Code.

Recommendations

• The development of the LTBA standard should take a child rights based approach, and ensure that as much as possible, coverage matches the online services that children and young people use.
• Any ‘thresholds’ included would consider children’s rights as a priority and risks to their privacy if not met.
• The understanding of what ‘use by a child’ is should be expanded beyond the obvious situation where a child has actively chosen to use a service.
• Frameworks for LTBA determinations could draw from the United Kingdom’s Age Appropriate Design Code and Irish Fundamentals to a child-oriented approach to data processing, and the evidence standards outlined in these jurisdictions.