Norway planning to raise minimum age for social media access to 15 to protect children
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The Norwegian government said it would implement measures to ensure that children abide by the new age limit.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: PIXABAY
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Children in Norway may need to wait a few more years to legally access social media, as the Scandinavian country plans to raise the minimum age from 13 to 15 in a bid to protect the young from harmful content online.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said the move “sends quite a strong signal”.
“Children must be protected from harmful content on social media. These are big tech giants pitted against small children’s brains,” he told newspaper VG on Oct 23, reported The Guardian.
“We know that this is an uphill battle because there are strong forces here, but it is also where politics is needed.”
Despite the existing age limit of 13 for children, research by the Norwegian media authority found that more than half of all nine-year-olds, 58 per cent of 10-year-olds, and 72 per cent of 11-year-olds were already using social media.
The Norwegian government said it would implement measures to ensure that children abide by the new age limit.
The measures reportedly include introducing an age verification barrier for social media, and amending the Personal Data Act so that only those aged 15 and above can agree to social media platforms handling their personal data.
Mr Store said social media could offer children a sense of community, but self-expression should not depend on the “power of algorithms”.
He added that social media could instead make users “become single-minded and pacified, because everything happens so fast on this screen”.
Ms Kjersti Toppe, who is minister for children and families, said the new rule was also aimed at helping parents.
“It is also about giving parents the security to say ‘no’. We know that many people really want to say ‘no’, but don’t feel they can,” she was quoted as saying by The Guardian during a meeting with parents campaigning for stricter online regulation for children.
Ms Toppe said the government was investigating methods of enforcing such restrictions that did not interfere with human rights.
Countries elsewhere have also introduced measures aimed at protecting children from online harm.
Australia said it will introduce new rules in 2024 that could ban children up to the age of 16 from using social media
China in July said it was embarking on a two-month campaign to “strengthen the protection of minors on the internet”
In Singapore, France, Finland and China, some schools have banned the use of phones.
