• Spain moves to restrict minors’ access to digital platforms
• Madrid paves the way for tougher legislation on technology companies

Spain has announced plans to impose a ban on the use of social media platforms for those under the age of 16, joining a growing number of European countries seeking to tighten controls on children’s presence in the digital space.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said, during his participation in the World Governments Summit in Dubai, that his country aims to protect children from the “digital Wild West,” stressing that the time has come to put real safeguards in place.

He explained that the proposed ban, which still requires parliamentary approval, forms part of a broader package of legislation, including holding technology company executives accountable for illegal or harmful content published on their platforms.

Sánchez noted that Australia led the way last year by implementing a similar ban, as other countries watch closely to assess the experiment’s results and effectiveness. France, Denmark, and Austria have announced they are studying the introduction of national age limits, while the UK government has launched consultations on the possibility of enforcing a ban for under-16s.

On the other hand, social media companies have warned that such measures could be difficult to enforce and ineffective, and may lead to the isolation of more vulnerable teenagers. Reddit, meanwhile, has challenged Australia’s ban in the High Court.

Sánchez emphasized that children today are being exposed to a space that was never designed for them to navigate alone, describing social media as an environment that fuels addiction, abuse, inappropriate content, manipulation, and violence, and stressing that his government will no longer accept this reality.

He revealed that the new laws would require platforms to implement effective age-verification systems that go beyond superficial checkboxes and rely on real technical barriers that are hard to bypass, referring to loopholes currently exploited by some minors.

He added that the legislation would also criminalize the manipulation of algorithms to amplify illegal content, arguing that hiding behind code and claiming technological neutrality is no longer acceptable, especially when algorithms are used to spread disinformation for profit.

Sánchez also referred to the creation of a new mechanism to monitor how digital platforms contribute to deepening divisions and amplifying hate speech, without providing further details on how it would operate.

He further announced plans to investigate and prosecute crimes committed via tools and platforms such as Grok, owned by X, as well as TikTok and Instagram. This comes as the European Commission has opened an investigation into Grok over concerns it was used to create inappropriate images of real people.

In the same context, the UK announced it had opened its own investigation into the same tool, while French authorities raided the offices of X in Paris as part of investigations into allegations including unlawful data extraction and complicity in the possession of inappropriate images of children.