The Global Push to Keep Kids Off Social Media

The European Union issued a bold declaration last month targeting one of the world’s wealthiest, most influential industries. “No social media under the age of 13. No personal account under the age of 15,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said during her state of the EU address. The plan puts the 27-nation bloc on track to join a growing number of countries enacting far-reaching bans, hourly restrictions, or other content moderation controls for young people on online platforms. More than 60 countries have imposed or are considering restrictions on minors’ social media access, according to Tech Policy Press, a nonprofit that tracks age restrictions. Policymakers have accused tech companies of using addictive design features, such as endless scroll and autoplay, to lure and keep minors online, while parents worry about megacorporations collecting their children’s data. “It’s the equivalent of putting our kids in cars with no seat belts, with no airbags, and having them drive on roads with no speed limits and no traffic lights,” former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said last year in a warning to Congress about the impact of social media on children’s health. In December 2025, Australia became the first to implement such legislation, barring children under 16 from creating social media accounts. As of October, 82 percent of Australian parents support such restrictions. This decision started a “domino effect,” said Tommaso Giardini, the associate director of the Digital Policy Alert, a nonprofit focused on online transparency. Governments from Brazil to Malaysia to the United Arab Emirates have since adopted policies that curb minors’ access to online platforms, with Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, X, and YouTube among the most common targets. “Selling the idea of protecting children is very easy,” Giardini said. Harder is deciding which strategy to pursue. Countries have generally followed three main policy approaches: the Australia model, the China model, and the India model. The Australia model Two people sitting cross-legged on a carpeted floor, holding and looking down at a tablet computer. Young people look at an iPad in Sydney on Dec. 7, 2025.George Chan/Getty Images Australia’s model of social media restriction may be the most straightforward—and the most severe. Users must be age 16 or older to create a social media account, period. Parents cannot consent on behalf of their children. “One of the virtues of age-based age-gating is that everyone knows the law,” said Terry Flew, a professor of digital communication and culture at the University of Sydney, who likened the policy to similar age-based bans on alcohol, smoking, and vaping. Three months after Australia’s ban took effect, Indonesia implemented a similar under-16 ban, though the Southeast Asian country included one major caveat: Children under age 13 will only have access to age-approved platforms, but those between ages 13 and 15 can go on “low risk” sites with parental consent. This model has also proved popular across Europe, where Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Spain, Turkey, and others have passed or are discussing age-based systems, each with their own conditions. “It is more interventionist, but it feels less interventionist,” Giardini said, adding that the approach “will probably cause less skepticism than the government or some government agency going into the details of which types of children can access which types of platforms for how many minutes.” Yet age-based restrictions have also come under criticism for being ineffective. According to an Australian government report published in March, around 7 out of 10 parents whose children were on social media prior to the ban said that they still had their accounts despite the order for platforms to remove minors’ profiles. Other countries with age-based systems, such as the United Kingdom, have recorded a surge in virtual private network usage as minors attempt to circumvent the prohibitions. Several governments have responded by increasing their penalties on social media platforms. In June, Australia announced that it would double fines on companies that fail to crack down on minors’ access, going from around $34 million to $68 million. However, experts suggest that the impact is limited. Facebook generated $200.97 billion in annual revenue last year; a fine of $68 million is just 0.03 percent of the company’s yearly earnings. Meanwhile, children’s rights experts warn that young people, particularly queer youth, will become more isolated without these online resources. Adults fear that a new bout of data collection—when they must prove their identities to access these sites—could violate their own privacy. Most of all, though, analysts say that simply restricting access does not address social media’s most concerning features. “By implementing this ban, the government is giving up on telling platforms how to regulate their algorithms, which is the essence of the problem,” said Francesco Bailo, the co-director of the University of Sydney’s Center for AI, Trust, and Governance. He warned that vulnerable people over age 16 remain exposed to the platforms’ addictive designs. Estonia, the only EU member state that opposes such bans, has made a similar argument. “The way to approach this, to me, is not to make kids responsible for that harm [stemming from social media platforms] and start self-regulating,” Estonian Education Minister Kristina Kallas told Politico in April. The “responsibility is on the governments and on the corporation side.” The China model People play games at an internet cafe in Beijing on Jan. 26, 2024. People play games at an internet cafe in Beijing on Jan. 26, 2024.Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images China—with its well-known Great Firewall—is no stranger to restricting online content. But in the realms of social media and gaming, Beijing has been a leader in protecting minors’ exposure. As early as 2002, China banned people under 18 from entering internet cafes, and increasingly tighter regulations have shaped how young people can access the digital world. That approach reached new heights in April 2025, when China launched its systemwide “minor mode” initiative. Whereas Australia’s age-based policy restricts usage all the time, China’s model offers a multitiered approach with caveats based on age, day of the week, and time of day. Children under 18 are barred from using nonessential internet applications between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., and screen time during the day is limited from 40 minutes to two hours depending on one’s age. Devices are required to remind users to rest every 30 minutes, online content is carefully tailored to match one’s age level, and parents can monitor their children’s activity. “China has built a holistic, systemic machinery for regulating minors’ internet use,” said Fengshu Liu, a professor at the University of Oslo who specializes in sociocultural issues among young people in China. Minor mode works at the device level, though, which gives parents ultimate control over whether to activate the system. “In practice, this means implementation varies significantly across households, heavily influenced by the digital literacy, educational level, and socioeconomic status of the parents,” Liu said. The EU has considered a similar strategy. On July 13, the bloc issued a report recommending that children under 13 have “time-limited” access to social media—and only with parental supervision. In September, von der Leyen outlined a tiered system that includes “mini accounts” for teens aged 13 and 14 that would restrict screen time and minimize contact with strangers. “It is not about our minors accessing social media,” von der Leyen said during her address. “It is about when and how do we allow social media to access minors.” Unlike Australia, the EU forecasted in July that it also plans to consider imposing restrictions on other online content deemed harmful to children. Although von der Leyen did not specify exactly what might be targeted, experts suspect that video games and artificial intelligence chatbots could be next. Chinese authorities have already started such a crackdown. In 2021, China mandated that those under 18 only be allowed to play video games from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and legal holidays, and only for a total of three hours per week, according to Daniel Ahmad, the director of research and insights at Niko Partners, a video game research firm. Individual apps use age-verification technology, including enhanced facial recognition run through a nationwide citizen database, to enforce these restrictions. Still, “loopholes exist, such as games distributed via Steam or PlayStation that are not officially distributed in China but can be accessed via a VPN or disc import,” Ahmad wrote in an email. Lack of parental accountability has also contributed to poor efficacy. Around 29 percent of young gamers in China continued to play outside of the allotted time during the first year these restrictions were in place, a Niko Partners report found in 2022. Of this group, 82 percent did so by using an adult’s account. The India model Participants attend a gaming festival in Bengaluru, India, on Sept. 28, 2025. Participants attend a gaming festival in Bengaluru, India, on Sept. 28, 2025.Idrees Mohammed/AFP via Getty Images Despite their differences, Australia and China’s social media policies have their whole-nation approach in common. India, meanwhile, has allowed legislation to be drafted and implemented on a state-by-state basis. In January, Goa became the first Indian state to weigh age restrictions similar to the Australian model. Two months later, Karnataka—home to India’s tech capital, Bengaluru—announced a social media ban for children under 16. And in April, the state of Andhra Pradesh declared its intention to draft a law limiting social media for those under 13. The United States has taken a similar approach, even as the federal government has considered a nationwide ban. In 2022, California—home to Silicon Valley—became the first state to enact a law requiring age-appropriate online design codes for minors. Since then, the state has joined Colorado, Minnesota, and New York in requiring social media platforms to display mental health warnings. Several other states have enacted or are considering legislation that requires age-verification measures. “I’m getting the sense that every [U.S.] state wants an all-the-above strategy” for addressing who should be responsible for a child’s welfare online, Joel Thayer, president of the Digital Progress Institute think tank, told Tech Policy Press. However, “it really just comes down to what the political will is for the particular legislator and where they see the most acute issues and what they think the most effective mechanism is.” Many lawmakers in India share the same mindset, arguing that waiting for federal action could hurt a politician’s reputation and that a localized approach is more efficient at responding to parental concerns. However, a state-by-state approach has its downsides. India is “a large country, and enforcement doesn’t happen,” said Mishi Choudhary, a technology lawyer and online civil liberties activist. “Businesses don’t have the same predictability, and that is why all these identity verification checks are such a patchwork that nobody really understands what the transparency is.” Around 500 million people in India are active social media users, some 750 million people own a smartphone, and just over 1 billion individuals are internet users. The country also has the largest population of young people in the world, according to a 2024 UNICEF report. Inconsistent implementation can also be found in the United States. “It is very difficult to actually geolocate particular users,” said Kate Ruane, director of the Free Expression Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology. For instance, if you live just across the border from a state with a different social media policy than your own state’s, then “you may find yourself subject to age verification in order to access a service that didn’t used to require that of you.” Ruane expects that the legality of social media restrictions is likely to come before the U.S. Supreme Court in the near future. Justice Brett Kavanaugh has already filed a concurrence arguing that age-based restrictions likely violate the First Amendment.