Spain to ban social media access for under-16s

Spain plans to ban access to social media for minors under 16 and platforms will be required to implement age-verification systems, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Tuesday as he announced several measures to guarantee a safe digital environment.

Sanchez’s left-wing coalition government has repeatedly complained about the proliferation of hate speech, pornographic content and disinformation on social media, saying it had negative effects on young people.

“Our children are exposed to a space they were never meant to navigate alone… We will no longer accept that,” Sanchez said as he addressed the World Government Summit in Dubai, calling on other European countries to implement similar measures.

“We will protect them from the digital Wild West,” he added.

Australia in December became the first country to ban social media for children under 16, a move being closely watched by other countries considering similar age-based measures, such as Britain and France.

Sanchez said Spain had joined five other European countries that he dubbed the “Coalition of the Digitally Willing” to coordinate and enforce cross-border regulation.

The coalition will hold its first meeting in the coming days, he said. Sanchez did not say which countries were in the group, and his office didn’t immediately respond to a request for clarification.

“We know that this is a battle that far exceeds the boundaries of any country,” he said.

Spain will also introduce a bill next week to hold social media executives accountable for illegal and hate-speech content, as well as to criminalise algorithmic manipulation and the amplification of illegal content, Sanchez said.

Among the measures he proposed was a system to track hate speech online while platforms would be required to introduce age verification systems that “were not just check boxes”, he said.

His government would begin the process of passing legislation from as early as next week, he said.

He added that prosecutors would explore ways to investigate possible legal infractions by Elon Musk’s Grok, TikTok and Instagram.