The Spanish government wants to ban access to social networks for those under 16 in order to protect them from a world of “pornography” and “violence”, announced Tuesday the Prime Minister, the socialist Pedro Sánchez, traveling to Dubai.
“Spain will ban access to social networks for minors under the age of 16,” Pedro Sánchez said during a speech at the World Government Summit being held in the United Arab Emirates.
“Platforms will need to put in place effective age verification systems, not just boxes to check, but real barriers that work,” added the Spanish leader.
“Today, our children are exposed to a space in which they were never supposed to navigate alone”, a space of “addiction, abuse, pornography, manipulation, violence”, he listed.
The left-wing leader further announced that the laws will be amended so that “platform managers are legally responsible for many offenses committed on their websites”.
“This means that the CEOs of these technology platforms will face criminal liability for failing to remove illegal or hateful content,” he said.
Sánchez had already indicated in November that he was considering “raising the minimum age to access social networks to 16”, but he announced that the idea is included in a set of five concrete measures that will be adopted “starting next week”.
The president of the Spanish government does not have a parliamentary majority and has recently encountered difficulties in gathering the necessary support to pass laws.
Australia paved the way for banning social networks for under-16s in December, and other countries have since tried to imitate it, such as France and Portugal, but the implementation of such a measure is complicated.
