When Governments Ban Social Media for Children
Part 1 of 4 | Reading time: 5 minutes
What’s Happening:
Australia removed 4.7 million under-16 accounts in two weeks.
France is fast-tracking an under-15 ban for September 2026, with President Macron declaring “the brains of our children are not for sale.”
The UK House of Lords voted 261-150 to require age verification within one year.
Egypt announced Sunday it will regulate children’s social media to combat “digital chaos.”
Denmark, Spain, Norway, and multiple U.S. states are advancing similar restrictions.
Governments worldwide have decided that leaving this to individual families isn’t working.
Why They’re Stepping In
Research links early smartphone ownership to depression, anxiety, obesity, and sleep problems. A study of 10,000+ children found those who received smartphones at age 12 showed 31% higher depression rates by age 14. Instagram’s internal research found the platform makes body image worse for one in three teenage girls. Multiple families in France have sued TikTok over teen suicides linked to harmful content served by algorithms.
The trouble is, despite the research telling us how social media and smartphone use is eroding the mental health of teens, 90% of under-13s in the US are still on social media AND have parental permission. Most parents aren’t fighting to keep their kids off platforms but enabling if not actively helping them create accounts.
Even if you hold the line with your own child, they’re exposed to content on friends’ phones. Platforms only work when everyone’s on them, which creates enormous pressure to join.
Governments see this as a market failure. When companies profit from potential harm and individual choice can’t solve it, they believe intervention becomes necessary.
What Government Bans Promise:
- Protection for all children, not just those with engaged parents
- No reliance on platforms to self-regulate
- Clear, enforceable standards
- Addresses the “everyone else has it” problem
What Government Bans Require:
Age verification infrastructure.
To enforce “no under-16s,” platforms need to verify everyone’s age. In other words, that means you, your teenager, everyone.
Methods include ID scans, facial recognition, credit card verification, social security number checks.
The data doesn’t disappear at 16. The infrastructure built to protect children becomes infrastructure to track everyone, permanently.
What Government Bans Don’t Solve:
The school bus problem
Your 13-year-old isn’t allowed Instagram but the five other kids on the bus are (in countries without bans) or will find workarounds. Your child still sees the content, still experiences the social dynamics, still feels the exclusion.
Bans remove direct access but they don’t remove exposure, albeit unwittingly.
The 16-year-old problem
At 16, children gain access to platforms that now have more sophisticated tracking, better behavioural data and refined algorithms. They’ve been “protected” from developing digital literacy. Now they enter fully formed surveillance systems without experience navigating them.
The infrastructure problem
When Egypt announces it will regulate children’s social media to combat “digital chaos,” it uses nearly identical language to France (“brains not for sale”) and Australia (“giving childhood back”).
Democratic governments and authoritarian ones are building the same tools:
- Age verification systems
- Content filtering capability
- Identity tracking mechanisms
- Access control tools
The infrastructure doesn’t care about governmental intent; once built, it can be repurposed.
Egypt has a documented history of blocking websites, arresting bloggers, and restricting online expression. When they adopt “child protection” frameworks using the same language as democracies, it raises questions about what else these systems might be used for.
The Scale of What’s Being Built:
Australia’s ban required platforms to verify millions of users, create legal frameworks for compliance, build enforcement mechanisms, establish appeals processes and implement privacy protections for verification data.
Meta alone removed 550,000 accounts. TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, Threads and are all building age verification systems.
This infrastructure persists. It doesn’t sunset when children turn 16, it just becomes permanent identity verification infrastructure that all users, adult and child alike, must navigate forever.
Who This Protects:
Children whose parents are not stopping their children from having social media access.
If 90% of under-13s in the US on social media have parental permission, individual choice has failed at scale. Those children’s mental health is at risk and needs protection even if their parents are not immediately concerned.
But at what cost?
The Tradeoff:
Children gain: Protection from direct platform access until 16.
Everyone loses: Privacy. The ability to use platforms anonymously. Freedom from identity verification.
Governments gain: Infrastructure that can verify identity, track behaviour, filter content, control access.
Is protecting children from social media until 16 worth building surveillance infrastructure that persists forever and provides tools that could be repurposed beyond child protection?
What Happens Next:
More countries will follow. Within two years, age verification for social media will likely be standard across Europe, parts of Asia, and potentially the U.S.
The infrastructure will be built. The precedent will be set. The tools will exist.
And then we’ll see what else those tools are used for.
Next Week:
Maybe government intervention isn’t necessary. Maybe the solution is parents simply saying “no”—protecting their own children without building surveillance infrastructure.
But if that works, why aren’t parents doing it?
And if they won’t, what happens to the children whose parents don’t protect them?
Next in series: Part 2: Why Saying No To Social Media Only Protects Your Child
Related stories:
France fast-tracking under-15 ban for September 2026
Egypt announces social media regulation for children
Research links smartphone ownership at 12 to depression, obesity, sleep problems
