Prohibiting social media for minors: Remedy or temporary solution?

As the harmful effects of social media platforms have become undeniable, the exciting promise of a globalized public square has given way to growing anxiety over uncontrolled digital dependency. Children, with their hyperactive reward system, are especially vulnerable to algorithms designed to capture users' attention at any cost. Several countries, both within and outside Europe, are considering whether to ban minors from accessing social media. However, some argue that such restrictions will not solve the problem.

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Social media has shaped generations in simultaneously stimulating and unsettling ways. For Guilherme Alexandre Jorge (24 years old, member of Volt Europe in Portugal) and Anna Mazzei (23 years old, member of the Italian Youth Greens), it initially served as an entry point to knowledge and connection to the world. Jorge joined Twitter at 15: “I started following people, then exploring what different topics meant, and I became more aware of issues both globally and locally.” Mazzei, who started using social media at 14, followed pages managed by younger creators instead of traditional media, finding them more engaging. “When I started engaging in activism,” she recalls, “it was also a way to see who shared my opinions and to follow green activists in Italy and abroad. It helped me feel part of something.”

More than a decade ago, social media was widely celebrated as a portal to a globalized world: quick access to news, digital meetings with loved ones abroad, and communities united by common interests. In 2010, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was named Person of the Year by Time magazine, symbolizing the promise of this new digital era. Those years now seem distant, and social media has shifted from being seen as a revolutionary communication tool to being treated by courts and regulators as a system that maximizes attention through aggressive algorithms at the expense of users’ mental health. By 2026, Zuckerberg is more likely to be in the news for legal cases and fines imposed on his company, Meta.

More than 90 percent of Europeans consider it urgent to protect children online.

According to the 2025 Eurobarometer, over 90 percent of Europeans consider it urgent to protect children online, citing negative impacts on mental health (93 percent), cyberbullying (92 percent), and the importance of restricting access to age-inappropriate content (92 percent). In response to citizens’ concerns, governments have begun to act. In December 2025, Australia became the first country in the world to implement a law banning social media access for users under 16, requiring platforms to implement age detection systems. In Europe, France approved legislation restricting access for minors under 15 without parental consent, while Spain is advancing a law to prohibit access for minors under 16, with mandatory age verification by platforms. Other countries, including Portugal, Germany, Norway, and Italy, mainly rely on parental consent models to regulate minors’ access.

The European Parliament also overwhelmingly supports restricting children’s access to social media. At the end of 2025, it approved a non-binding resolution stating that minors should not access social media before age 16, although parents can give consent from age 13. Although the document has no legal force, it exerts political pressure on the European Commission, which now has the power to turn these recommendations into effective European legislation.

A digital drug?

These developments respond to growing concerns from experts, teachers, and families about excessive smartphone use and the risks social media pose to young people, particularly in terms of mental health, exposure to harmful content, and cyberbullying. While there is broad consensus that social media presents a genuine and urgent challenge, there is much less agreement on how best to address it. Some advocate strict measures such as age-based bans, while others prefer solutions focused on education, digital literacy, and platform accountability, reflecting broader tensions between protection and autonomy and differing views on who should bear responsibility. Consequently, measures banning minors from using social media have generated skepticism and debate over whether such restrictions address the root of the problem or merely serve as partial and potentially ineffective solutions, raising broader questions about enforcement, privacy, and the role of the platforms themselves.

Even before proposing legislation to restrict access, in November 2025, the Spanish government presented the most comprehensive research in the world on the impact of technology on childhood and adolescence. The study Childhood, Adolescence, and Digital Well-Being, published by Red.es, UNICEF Spain, the University of Santiago de Compostela, and the General Council of Computer Engineering Orders, gathers the voices of about 100,000 children and adolescents in Spain. According to the research, 41 percent of children already have their own smartphone by age 10, and 76 percent by age 12. About 20 percent of boys and girls aged 10 to 20 report spending more than five hours a day on social media on weekends, and intensive use is associated with increased anxiety, lower quality of life, and greater exposure to harassment, cyberbullying, or digital control in romantic relationships.

Additional evidence suggests that delaying the introduction of smartphones into children’s lives until age 13 or 14—rather than the average age of 10.8 in Spain—reduces problems such as video game addiction, exposure to sexting and pornography, and contact with strangers by half.

“The scientific evidence we have shows that the increasingly early introduction of smartphones, and social media in particular, into children’s lives is not harmless. It takes more than it gives,” summarizes Antonio Rial, co-leader of the national study, associate professor of social psychology at the University of Santiago de Compostela, and a leading expert in adolescent behavior, digital media, and substance-free dependencies.

The adolescent brain, with an overactive reward system and still immature executive control, is highly vulnerable to the mechanisms of social media designed to capture users’ attention at any cost. Anna Lembke, one of the first researchers to document this effect, wrote in her 2021 book Dopamine Nation: “The smartphone is the modern hypodermic syringe, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 to a generation connected online.”

In other words, parents have good reasons to worry. María Gijón, author of You Can Leave Your Phone If You Know How (Puedes Dejar Tu Móvil Si Sabes Cómo, 2026) and mother of a 12-year-old, heads the Madrid delegation of Adolescence Free of Phones (Adolescencia Libre de Smartphones). The movement started in 2023 with a conversation among concerned mothers in a park in the Poblenou neighborhood of Barcelona and has since grown into a nationwide initiative. Its goal is to unite families around delaying children’s use of smartphones. “The idea is that if we all agree to give them later, it becomes easier to resist the social pressure we used to feel to give a smartphone at age 12,” Gijón explains. The association naturally supports the measures proposed by the Spanish government to limit minors’ access to social media.

Gijón believes that minors and teenagers do not use their phones for activities like learning to play piano or studying three languages. “These cases are a needle in a haystack,” she explains: “What’s at stake here is public health, and in public health, we must focus on the majority.” Rial and Gijón both emphasize that banning social media use for minors under 16 will especially protect vulnerable families, whose children tend to use digital devices more excessively than others. Although digital dependency is a global problem that does not differ by socioeconomic status, race, or gender, not all children have access to good schools where they can be guided on proper technology use. “The lower the socioeconomic level, the greater the misinformation and probably the greater the harm. This makes preventive action through legislation even more necessary,” Rial affirms.

The expert’s position is clear: social media should be illegal for minors, just like alcohol and tobacco. “Once and for all, policymakers have sided with minors, who need protection. They have sided with families, who need support and guidance. And they have held the tech industry accountable, making it clear that most of the responsibility lies with them, not with children or their families,” he states.

The disease and the cure

As governments advance in regulating platforms, the tech industry has responded skillfully, flooding the public discourse with content highlighting the benefits of social media and presenting digital education as the main solution to mitigate its shortcomings. But there are also experts who, despite criticizing how these platforms operate, oppose measures that restrict minors’ access, arguing that the remedy could be worse than the disease.

We should not punish children instead of platforms. A ban should target specific social media platforms that do not comply with minors’ protection rules

Proponents who argue that minors should retain access claim that social media provides adolescents with information, connection, and role models that they might not find in family or school environments. For many marginalized groups, these social platforms have served as vital spaces for self-expression and community building. “If we proceed with bans without exploring alternatives, we end up depriving them of participation in public life as well as a wide range of connection and learning opportunities,” says Marta G. Franco, journalist, social media expert, and author of Las redes son nuestras (The Networks Are Ours), who describes herself as “a citizen of the internet since 1999.”

Alexandra Geese, a Green Member of the European Parliament working on digital issues, agrees: “We should not punish children instead of platforms. A ban should target specific social media platforms that do not comply with minors’ protection rules.” At the same time, she states: “We should support initiatives to build a better internet. These could offer safe spaces for children and should not be affected by a ban.”

Franco notes that, despite increasing calls to restrict social media, government officials continue to rely on these platforms for real-time information. She points out, for example, that following a serious train accident in January, the Spanish Minister of Transport shared live updates on train services via Twitter, highlighting the state’s dependence on social media as an immediate communication tool.

Furthermore, critics warn that bans could undermine efforts to promote youth engagement in politics. Mazzei highlights a paradox: if 16-year-olds have voting rights, as in an increasing number of European countries, does it make sense to restrict their access to information on social media until that age?

Franco also warns against drawing broad conclusions from studies. Although anxiety and depression among youth increased roughly at the same time social media became widespread, between 2010 and 2015, other factors—such as the global economic crisis—may have contributed to this outcome. Franco adds that in the United States, where many of these studies originate, screening began around the same time among adolescents, possibly creating the impression of a rise in mental health issues. “The fact that two things happen simultaneously doesn’t necessarily mean one causes the other. It’s even worth asking whether the reverse could be true: that psychological problems lead to increased social media use,” she notes.

If 16-year-olds have voting rights, as in an increasing number of European countries, does it make sense to restrict their access to information on social media until that age?

Rial disagrees: “The levels of anxiety, somatization, and depression triple, and the risk of suicide quadruples among adolescents who clearly show a pattern of maladaptive social media use. Could it be that a young person with emotional deficiencies, or with a pre-existing mental health issue, is more prone to develop maladaptive social media use? Of course. The relationship is bidirectional, but that does not exclude the existence of the first direction.”

Like Rial, Franco is critical of digital spaces created by private companies designed to extract maximum profit from our data, and in her work, she advocates for alternative environments that promote healthier interactions. However, she considers that banning access altogether is akin to throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Asking the right question

Nicoleta Prutean, Senior Governance Analyst at the Center for Future Generations (CGF) and expert in neuroscience and psychology, works on policy formulation to safeguard mental health in the age of technological acceleration. She considers age restrictions a political response to a poorly formulated question. “The question ‘do social media harm mental health?’ sounds very much like asking ‘do foods harm physical health?’ Food can be good, but it can also be bad.” In her view, the correct approach is to ask which functionalities in social media design are harmful. “The answers would be the recommendation system features, interface functionalities, infinite scroll, autoplay, and variable rewards that exploit our attention span and sensitivity to reward,” she notes. Ignoring the fact that social media problems lie at the design level risks leaving us vulnerable to new technologies—such as generative AI—that can replicate these functionalities. “If we keep focusing only on social media as a whole and not on the mechanisms, we will lose sight of other technologies where these mechanisms are even stronger.”

The current European legislation specifically addresses the functionalities of digital platforms known to disrupt mental health. “The Digital Services Act (DSA) targets the right objects, recognizes that system design plays a very important role, and foresees financial sanctions,” explains Prutean. In February, the European Commission released the preliminary conclusions of the DSA regarding TikTok, concluding that its addictive features—such as infinite scroll, autoplay, and highly personalized recommendations—may violate the law by not mitigating risks to user well-being. If confirmed, TikTok could be fined up to 6 percent of its global annual turnover, the maximum penalty under the DSA for serious infringements.

Ignoring the fact that social media problems lie at the design level risks leaving us vulnerable to new technologies—such as generative AI—that can replicate these functionalities.

Geese also advocates targeting specific problematic practices of platforms. “Instead of debating a general ban on social media, we should identify problematic practices such as algorithms that favor borderline content, segmentation, and addictive features. Under the Digital Services Act, the European Commission could already apply stricter rules to social media.”

However, Prutean argues that both measures—restrictions on minors’ access and the DSA—overlook the broader spectrum of mental well-being. The former reduces it to the absence of suffering: “Being mentally healthy also means being able to act, for example. We should not aspire for future generations to simply not be depressed or anxious; we should aspire for more.” In the case of the DSA, she notes that harm often occurs well before a clinical pathology emerges. “This is not clearly explicit [in legislation]. Broadening the definition of mental harm and providing scientific evidence and references would make these laws more applicable. The reference to mental health is there, but the threshold for what constitutes harm is not very clear, which makes enforcement difficult.”

For Franco, “it is somewhat paradoxical that we are constantly hearing calls for new laws, while Spain is one of the countries [along with Germany and France] supporting the deregulation of data protection laws through the Digital Omnibus, which is currently being debated in the European Commission.” She also notes that Spain is delayed in transposing the DSA, which requires the creation of a national authority for its implementation.

Holding platforms accountable

One of the main challenges of measures restricting minors’ access is the age verification system. Australia’s pioneering ban has faced practical difficulties: the law does not specify a particular technology, leaving platforms to choose methods. Although millions of accounts of minors have been closed, many minors remain active because verification tools are imperfect and platforms allow multiple ways to circumvent rules. In contrast, Spain (and more broadly the EU) is developing a protocol that preserves privacy, through which users would hold a cryptographic credential—similar to a digital ID card—that proves their age without revealing personal data. Stored in a digital wallet, the credential is securely presented to platforms, which only know that the user meets the age requirement, not their full identity.

Technology advances much faster than legislation, and the only way to protect minors—who lack the capacity to self-regulate against addictive designs or tools—is to delay their age of access.

While Gijón emphasizes the need to accompany restrictions with an effective age verification system that ensures platform compliance (including through sufficiently severe penalties to deter rule violations) and prevents minors from easily circumventing measures, Franco is concerned about the risk that online activities could be traced back to users’ legal identities. She warns: “No matter how much they tell us it will be handled in a way that doesn’t involve sharing our identity with the platform, any data we leave behind is extremely risky and could potentially be captured somehow.” Geese shares similar concerns: “It is vital that no additional data be used—and in particular, no biometric data. Biometric data can be used for sexualized images or political surveillance many years later.”

The interviewees proposed different solutions to the social media problem but agreed on two points: that the way social media are currently designed does not only affect minors, and that big tech companies should be held responsible. Jorge notes that although limiting screen addiction in minors would bring clear benefits, the problem cannot be framed as only affecting children, which is why intervention needs to focus on the algorithms driving compulsive engagement. “I’m 24 and I’m still glued to my phone,” he says. Mazzei emphasizes the importance of allowing young people to participate in a digital society while warning against an unmanaged algorithm. She does not take a firm stance in the debate but warns that prohibition might be the wrong approach: “Maybe restricting or moderating access is better.”

Rial, for his part, places the debate within a broader democratic framework, asking: “If we analyze the problem in depth, this is a question about the quality of democracy. Studies in the US show that 80 percent of hate speech is produced by only 20 percent of users or accounts. What happens with that?”

The digital space, once celebrated as a democratic public forum, now resembles more a shopping mall than a public square. Franco argues that the alternative lies in fostering different digital environments: “This involves greater public collaboration with companies and citizens to build digital spaces based on open-source software and other guiding principles.”

While such collaboration is attempted, “the mental, physical, and social health of children and adolescents continues to deteriorate,” worries Gijón. “Technology advances much faster than legislation, and the only way to protect minors—who lack the capacity to self-regulate against addictive designs or tools—is to delay their age of access.”