The Norwegian government has officially announced the preparation of a groundbreaking bill that would establish a minimum age for using social media. The document is expected to be submitted to parliament by the end of this year, with new rules taking effect on January 1 of the year a child turns 16. A key feature of the law is shifting the responsibility for age verification onto tech giants.

Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre emphasized that the initiative aims to give children back a proper childhood, where games and communication are not consumed by algorithms and screens. To avoid social division within classrooms, authorities decided to tie access to the year of birth rather than a specific date. This means entire school cohorts will gain access to social media simultaneously, with a minimum user age of 15.

Minister of Digitalization Karianne Tung stated that technology companies must implement effective verification mechanisms at login and comply with the law from its first day of effect. According to her, children should not be responsible for complying with the ban on accessing platforms — this is a direct obligation of service providers. Norway will become one of the first countries in Europe to introduce such strict regulation, following in the footsteps of France.

The implementation process will take place in two stages and will be synchronized with the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA), which requires platforms to enforce age restrictions. Norway has already seen a decline in the proportion of children owning smartphones, attributed to national recommendations on screen time limits and the creation of phone-free zones in schools. The bill is expected to undergo consultations until the summer of this year.

It is worth recalling that Australia previously introduced such a ban. BBC investigated how the ban changed the daily lives of ordinary families, with mixed results ranging from a sense of long-awaited freedom to attempts to cheat the system. In January this year, Meta blocked about 550,000 accounts on Instagram, Facebook, and Threads in the first days of Australia's new legislation. The massive account purge is linked to the enforcement of the law, which imposes a complete ban on social media use for those under 16.

Source: podrobno.uz