Spain to ban social media access for under-16s, PM Sanchez says

Spain plans to ban social media for those aged under 16 and will create a law to hold social media executives personally responsible for hate speech on their plaforms, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Tuesday (3 February).

Spain joins a host of countries such as Britain and France considering banning social media, after Australia in December became the first country in the world to prohibit access to such platforms for children under 16.

Governments and regulators worldwide are also looking at the impact of children's screen time on their development and mental health.

"Our children are exposed to a space they were never meant to navigate alone... We will no longer accept that," Sanchez said as he addressed the World Governments Summit in Dubai, calling on other European countries to implement similar measures.

"We will protect them from the digital Wild West," he added.

Representatives of X, Google, TikTok, Snapchat and Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Spain's proposed measures.

Sanchez said Spain had joined five other European countries that he dubbed the "Coalition of the Digitally Willing" to coordinate and enforce cross-border regulation.

The coalition will hold its first meeting in the coming days, he said. Sanchez did not say which countries were in the group, and his office didn't immediately respond to a request for clarification.

"We know that this is a battle that far exceeds the boundaries of any country," he said.

One of Europe's few centre-left leaders currently, Sanchez first took aim at social media owners last year, referring to them as a "techno-caste" that should be held responsible for "poisoning society" with algorithms.

The EU's Digital Services Act, which took full effect in early 2024, requires social media platforms to moderate content, while critics say this creates tensions between responsible governance and censorship concerns.

The recent rapid explosion of AI-generated content online has fuelled the debate, however, highlighted this month by a public outcry over reports of Elon Musk's Grok AI chatbot generating non-consensual sexual images, including of minors. 

Hold Social Media Executives Accountable

Sanchez said Spain will introduce a bill next week to hold social media executives accountable for illegal and hate-speech content, as well as to criminalise algorithmic manipulation and the amplification of illegal content.

Among the measures he proposed was a system to track hate speech online, while platforms would be required to introduce age verification systems that "were not just check boxes", he said.

Sanchez also said prosecutors would explore ways to investigate possible legal infractions by Elon Musk's Grok, TikTok and Instagram.

His government would begin the process of passing legislation from as early as next week, he said.

About 82% of Spaniards said they believed children under 14 should be banned from social media inside and outside school, according to a 30-country Ipsos poll on education published last August. That was up from 73% in 2024.

Musk's flagship artificial intelligence chatbot Grok continues to generate sexualized images of people even when users explicitly warn that the subjects do not consent and despite new curbs, Reuters has found.

In Australia, social media companies collectively deactivated nearly 5 million accounts belonging to teenagers within weeks of its ban taking effect, the country's internet regulator said last month, suggesting the measure could have a sweeping impact.