Sánchez announces that Spain will ban access to social media for minors under 16.

MadridThe Spanish government has long aimed to take steps to strengthen the regulation of major digital platforms and ensure a safe digital environment, especially for minors. This Tuesday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced the government's intention to prohibit access to social media for those under 16 in Spain. The announcement is part of a new package of legislative measures that Sánchez outlined during a speech at the World Governments Summit, which began Tuesday in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. With this proposal, the Spanish government seeks to curb the "abuses" of large platforms and guarantee a digital environment that is "safe, democratic, and respectful of fundamental rights." In fact, during his speech, Sánchez also announced that Spain has joined five other European countries to form a coalition to "move forward in a coordinated and effective manner internationally in implementing stricter, faster, and more effective regulation of social media platforms."

In addition to restricting access to social media for young people under 16, Sánchez has also announced his intention to criminalize the manipulation of algorithms and the amplification of illegal content, and to end the "impunity" of executives so that they are "legally responsible" for infringements. He had already made this announcement in 2025 during the World Economic Forum in Davos. The Spanish president also stated that the government wants to create a tracking, quantification, and traceability system to establish a "trace of hate and polarization," and finally, to work with the Public Prosecutor's Office on "ways to investigate legal infringements by Google, TikTok, and Instagram." However, some of the legislative changes that the Spanish government wants to approve will have to go through Congress to receive the green light.

Open debate

Limiting access to social media is a debate that has been brewing in Europe for some time. France, for example, wants to prohibit children under 15 from accessing these digital platforms. The Portuguese Parliament, meanwhile, has a bill on the table to ban the use of these spaces for children under 13 and require parental permission for young people between 13 and 16. Countries like Australia have also announced laws to move in this direction.

A few months ago, during the presentation of a Pioneering report in the State on how children and teenagers use mobile phonesAs well as the digital environment, Sánchez had already criticized the major tech companies for their inaction against cyberbullying. The study clearly demonstrated the use of mobile phones and the digital environment by teenagers in Spain: eight out of ten fifth-grade students say they already use social media—and in the case of young people between 10 and 20 years old, almost all (92.5%). "We cannot simply accept that they [children and young people] are digital natives and stand idly by. [...] We must ensure that they grow up healthy and protected," argued Sánchez at the time, who had already appealed to the role of the government, schools, and families in preventing the digital environment from becoming a breeding ground for cyberbullying. Thus, Tuesday's announcements maintain Pedro Sánchez's standoff with the major tech companies, starting with Meta, Mark Zuckerberg's company, against which Sánchez has launched an investigation for alleged violations of user privacy. The Spanish prime minister has long used the term "tech elite" to refer to the sector and its executives, and has spearheaded the fight in the European Union to "stand up to," as he put it, practices he considers "abusive." In fact, just this week he responded to Elon Musk, owner of X., after his criticism of the regularization of migrants in Spain.