Spain to Ban Under-16s on Social Media as the World Goes All in on Age Verification

Governments across the globe are increasingly making it harder for teens and children to access social media.

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced plans on Tuesday to ban anyone younger than 16 from accessing social media platforms. The ban still needs to be approved by the country’s parliament, but a bill could be introduced as early as next week.

“We will protect them from the digital wild west,” Mr. Sánchez said in a speech at the World Governments Summit in Dubai, The New York Times reported.

In Greece, a senior government official told Reuters on Tuesday that the country is also “very close” to announcing its own social media ban for children under 15.

If the plans move forward, Spain and Greece would join Australia, which last year became the first nation in the world to enforce a nationwide ban on social media accounts for teenagers.

The Australian law is aimed at shielding kids from the worst parts of the internet, including cyberbullying, eating disorder content, and posts promoting self-harm. It prohibits anyone under 16 from having accounts on some of the internet’s biggest social media networks.

The 10 currently affected platforms include TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Snapchat, YouTube, Reddit, Kick, and Twitch. The policy requires these platforms to use age-verification technology to ensure account holders are 16 or older. Any account tied to someone younger must be deactivated.

But not everyone is on board. Reddit and some teenagers have filed lawsuits claiming the ban infringes on teens’ “freedom of political communication.” Other groups like the ACLU have argued that similar age-verification legislation proposed in the U.S. in recent years would violate the First Amendment.

Still, proposals for these bans seem to be steadily spreading across the world.

Late last year, French President Emmanuel Macron backed draft legislation that would prohibit anyone under 15 from accessing social media.

In Denmark, the government announced plans in November to ban access to social media for anyone under 5, with an exception for teens ages 13 and 14 if they have parental consent.

In November, Malaysia announced plans to ban children under 16 from using social media starting this year, but the measure has still not gone into effect.

While not a ban on social media accounts, last summer the U.K. began enforcing its Online Safety Act, a law passed in 2023 aimed at preventing children from accessing pornography and other “harmful” content. The law requires platforms like Bluesky, Discord, Grindr, Reddit, and X to use age-verification tech to ensure users attempting to access such material are at least 18 years old.

Here in the U.S., there are no federal bans on children using social media. However, at least nine states have passed laws requiring parental consent or age verification for minors.