Australia has done what many psychiatrists and educators have been demanding for years: prohibiting minors from accessing applications as addictive as social networks. At midnight on December 10 The law came into force that prevents those who have not turned 16 from using TikTok or Instagram.
The reason, according to the Australian government itself, is none other than “protect children’s mental health“. The Executive has even gone so far as to assure, when asked about the radical nature of this measure, that “unprecedented” actions are needed to keep young people away from the “predatory algorithms” that flood their digital devices with pornography, violence and harassment.
And, as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese indicated before this law came into force, “too often, “Social networks are not social at all.”
“Instead, they are used as a weapon for bullies, as a platform for social pressure, as a driver of anxiety, as a vehicle for scammers and, worst of all, as a tool for predators online“he added.
So, when Australian children woke up this morning, they found their accounts closed. From now on, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit, Kick, Twitch, Threads o X The creation of new users under 16 years of age is prohibited. Likewise, existing accounts that belonged to this age group have disappeared.
If they do not comply with the regulations, these platforms face fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars (around 28.3 million euros).
According to DW, Meta, YouTube and other internet giants have criticized the ban, which prevents them from accessing thousands of loyal users, although they have reluctantly agreed to comply with the measure.
This, according to local media, does not prevent litigation in the courts in this regard. Reddit has already threatened to ask the Supreme Court of Australia to overturn the ban. For YouTube, this regulation would be “hasty” and predicts that will push minors to “deeper, darker corners of the internet”.
What happens in Spain
There are many experts who differ from the opinion of the large platforms and who have been demanding similar measures in Europe and Spain for years. One of them is the clinical psychologist specializing in the prevention of suicidal behavior in childhood and adolescence, Francisco Villar Cabeza.
In different conversations with ENCLAVE ODS has stated that social networks “make kids sick” and that in the Program for Attention to Suicidal Behavior in Minors, at the Sant Joan de Déu Hospital in Barcelona, they are seeing how children and adolescents They point to “screens” as their main source of emotional distress.
Specifically, Villar has been demanding for years, along with other mental health professionals, families and teachers, that in Spain the access and use of smartphones and social networks.
Something that, in 2024, seemed to materialize (although only in part) in that draft Organic Law for the protection of minors in digital environments, whose processing Congress gave the green light last September. A regulation that seeks, for example, to tackle problems such as the spread of pornographic images of minors generated with deepafakes o IT.
And it is precisely in this organic law that the Government of Spain proposes raising the minimum age at which minors can give consent for the processing of their personal data from 14 to 16 years. In this way, and as a direct consequence, Any minor child would be prohibited from creating accounts on social networks without the consent of their parents or legal guardians.
Perhaps, in 2026, Spain will join Australia in protecting children and adolescents from the dangers of algorithms.