SPAIN TO BAN SOCIAL MEDIA FOR MINORS BID – Government studies French-style restrictions for young people under age of sixteen years
Madrid residents appeared to welcome the Spanish government’s plans to ban access to social media for minors under 16, with platforms required to implement age-verification systems.
Spain’s Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, announced the plan today as he outlined several measures to ensure a safe digital environment.
Sanchez’s 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.
Sanchez, while addressing the World Government Summit in Dubai, said that children are exposed to a space they were never meant to navigate alone and called on other European countries to implement similar measures.
Australia in December of 2025 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.
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.
