MADRID (AP) \u2014 Spain plans to ban social media access for children under 16, Prime Minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez said Tuesday, in a move designed to shield young people from the harms of online content.<\/p>\n
S\u00e1nchez chided the world\u2019s biggest tech companies in a speech at a Dubai summit, saying they allow illegal content such as child sex abuse and nonconsensual sexualized deepfake images to proliferate on their platforms. He said that governments also needed to \u201cstop turning a blind eye.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, our children are exposed to a space they were never meant to navigate alone,\u201d S\u00e1nchez said. \u201cWe will no longer accept that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spain joins a growing number of countries, including Australia<\/a> and France<\/a>, which have taken or are considering measures to restrict minors\u2019 access to social media.<\/p>\n In January, France approved a bill banning social media for children under 15, paving the way for the measure to take effect at the start of the next school year in September. The bill would also ban the use of mobile phones in high schools.<\/p>\n Australia has started implementing<\/a> the world\u2019s first social media ban for under-16s, after its government passed a measure that holds platforms including TikTok, Twitch, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram liable for failing to prevent children from having accounts.<\/p>\n Denmark has introduced similar legislation<\/a> to ban access to social media for users under 15, while the U.K. said last month it would consider banning young teenagers<\/a> from social media, as it tightens laws designed to protect children from harmful content and excessive screen time.<\/p>\n S\u00e1nchez said that Spain would require social media companies to enforce the ban with age verification systems, \u201cnot just check boxes, but real barriers that work.\u201d<\/p>\n Many social media apps require users to be at least 13, though enforcement varies. Users are often asked to declare their own age.<\/p>\n Spain\u2019s ban will be added to an already existing measure centered on digital protections for minors that is being debated by parliament, a government spokesperson said. S\u00e1nchez said that could happen as early as next week.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear if S\u00e1nchez\u2019s left-wing coalition will get the approval needed in Parliament, where his government lacks a majority. A spokesperson for the far-right Vox party said the S\u00e1nchez government\u2019s measure was aimed at \u201cmaking sure that no one criticizes them,\u201d while the main opposition party \u2014 the center-right Popular Party \u2014 said it had proposed similar restrictions last year, seemingly offering its support.<\/p>\n Social media companies Meta \u2014 which owns Facebook and Instagram \u2014 and X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n But Elon Musk, X\u2019s billionaire owner and the world\u2019s richest man, wrote that \u201cS\u00e1nchez is the true fascist totalitarian,\u201d in a post referencing the Spanish leader\u2019s speech at the World Governments Summit in the United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n In his address, S\u00e1nchez also said that Spain had joined five other European countries in what the Spanish leader dubbed a \u201ccoalition of the digitally willing\u201d to coordinate the regulation of social media platforms at a multinational level.<\/p>\n Additionally, Spain would make it a criminal offense to manipulate algorithms to amplify illegal content and would hold tech executives liable for failing to take down criminal content from their platforms, he said. <\/p>\n \u201cNo more pretending that technology is neutral,\u201d S\u00e1nchez said.<\/p>\n Both measures would require parliamentary approval to change Spanish law, a government spokesperson said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MADRID (AP) \u2014 Spain plans to ban social media access for children under 16, Prime Minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1093,3038,859,14517,1220,9776,14516,205,24,14515,2124,17,913,3043,14514,394],"class_list":["post-28606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-business","tag-children","tag-education","tag-elon-musk","tag-general-news","tag-inc","tag-meta-platforms","tag-pedro-sanchez","tag-politics","tag-send-to-apple-news","tag-social-media","tag-spain","tag-spain-government","tag-technology","tag-united-arab-emirates","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}