New Legislation Aims to Curb Youth Exposure and Protect Mental Health.

Kehinde Adegoke | BBC

Spain is currently planning to ban social media for children under 16, becoming the latest European country to do so.

“We will protect them from the digital Wild West,” Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said at the World Governments Summit in Dubai on Tuesday.

The ban, still pending parliamentary approval, would hold company executives responsible for illegal or harmful platform content.

Australia became the world’s first country to successfully impose the ban last year. Since then, others have been watching and judging its success.

Similarly, France, Denmark, and Austria have announced they will set their own national age limits.

Meanwhile, the UK government has launched a consultation on whether to implement a ban on under-16s.

On the other side of the debate, social media companies have argued that the bans would be ineffective, difficult to implement, and could isolate vulnerable teenagers. For instance, Reddit is challenging Australia’s ban in the High Court.

“Today, our children are exposed to a space they were never meant to navigate alone,” Sánchez said, describing social media as a place of “addiction, abuse, pornography, manipulation [and] violence.

“We will no longer accept that. We will protect them.”

Sánchez first mooted a possible ban in November, but on Tuesday, the plan was fleshed out.

The changes would require social media platforms to implement effective age-verification systems. “Not just check boxes, but real barriers that work,” the prime minister explained, possibly referencing the loopholes Australian children use to bypass checks, such as using a photo of an adult.

The new laws would also criminalise anyone who manipulates algorithms to amplify illegal content.

“This is something created, promoted, and disseminated by certain actors whom we will investigate, as well as the platforms whose algorithms amplify disinformation in exchange for profit,” Sánchez said.

“Hiding behind code and claiming that technology is neutral is no longer acceptable.”

A new system would track how digital platforms fuel division and amplify hate. Authorities did not give further details about how it would work.

Another measure, Sánchez said, would be to “investigate and prosecute the crimes committed by Grok [X’s AI tool], TikTok, and Instagram”.

The European Commission has launched an investigation into Grok over concerns it was used to create sexualised images of real people.

In the same vein, the UK has announced its own investigation into Grok, and on Tuesday in France, the offices of X were raided by the Paris prosecutor’s cyber-crime unit as it looked into allegations of offences including unlawful data extraction and complicity in the possession of child pornography.

X has yet to respond to either investigation; the BBC has approached it for comment. It has previously characterised the French investigation as an attack on free speech.

Sánchez said he hoped to get the laws passed next week, but that could prove difficult because his left-wing coalition government lacks a parliamentary majority.

Spain’s main opposition party, the conservative People’s Party, appears to support the ban, saying it proposed similar restrictions last year. The far-right Vox party has spoken out against it, however.

In response to the announcement, X owner Elon Musk labelled Sánchez as a “tyrant and traitor to the people of Spain”.

France has led the charge in Europe, with President Emmanuel Macron saying he wants a ban for under-15s in place by the start of the next school year in September.