MADRID, Feb 3 (Reuters) – 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 platforms, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Tuesday.
Spain joins a host of countries such as Britain and France considering tougher stances on 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.
‘COALITION OF THE DIGITALLY WILLING’
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.
The proposed measures will be a form of censoring criticism of the government, said Pepa Millan, parliamentary spokesperson of far-right Vox party, which uses social media to spread its message.
“The only thing they legislate for and the only measures they take are to cling to power and maintain the official narrative in the media,” she said.
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.
The ban will be implemented as part of a change to an already existing bill on digital protection for minors that is being debated in parliament, according to a government spokesperson. The spokesperson didn’t provide further details.
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.
“It’s a good measure to encourage children to play with each other and not be on their mobile phones in parks, which I think is terrible, to be honest,” said Miguel Abad, a 19-year-old student in Madrid.
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.
(Reporting by David Latona, Emma Pinedo and Victoria Waldersee; additional reporting by Paolo Laudani; writing by Charlie Devereux; editing by Hugh Lawson)
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