Spain to ban social media for under-16s

The Spanish government has announced plans to ban social media for under-16s. Spain will be the first European country to introduce such a measure.

Prime minister Pedro Sánchez announced the plan yesterday and also pledged to penalise sites that fail to take down “illegal or harmful content.”

“We will protect children from the digital Wild West,” Sánchez announced at the Global summit in Dubai.  The measure will involve digital platforms installing verifiable age confirmation.  

However, Sánchez’s pledge to make social media executives responsible for hate speech on their platforms triggered social media executive Elon Musk, who called the Spanish leader “a tyrant and a traitor” and “the true fascist totalitarian” on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.