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Spain has proposed a ban on social media use by teenagers as attitudes hardened in Europe against the technology, drawing personal insults against the prime minister from Elon Musk.
The government is preparing a series of measures including a social media ban for under-16s, the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said, promising to protect children from the “digital wild west” and hold tech companies responsible for hateful and harmful content.
Sánchez said on Tuesday that urgent action was needed because social media was a “failed state where laws are ignored and crimes are tolerated”.
He also took Musk to task for using X to “amplify disinformation” over his administration’s decision last week to regularise 500,000 undocumented workers and asylum seekers, pointing out that Musk was himself a migrant.
Musk wrote on X in response: “Dirty Sánchez is a tyrant and a traitor to the people of Spain.” About an hour and a half later, he escalated his criticism, posting on X: “Sánchez is the true fascist totalitarian.”
Representatives of Google, part of Alphabet, TikTok, Snapchat and Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Spain’s proposed measures.
Greece is also close to announcing a similar ban for children under 15, a senior government source said.
Spain and Greece look set to join countries such as Britain and France in considering tougher stances on social media, after Australia in December became the first nation to prohibit access to such platforms for children younger than 16.
Governments and regulators worldwide are looking at the impact of children’s screen time on their development and mental wellbeing.
“Our children are exposed to a space they were never meant to navigate alone … We will no longer accept that,” Sanchez said at the World Governments Summit in Dubai. “We will protect them from the digital wild west.”
Spain joins five other European countries that he called the “coalition of the digitally willing” to coordinate and enforce cross-border regulation, Sanchez said, without naming the countries, set to hold their first meeting in the coming days.
“We know that this is a battle that far exceeds the boundaries of any country,” he said. His office did not respond to a request for clarification.
Legislation to ban children under 15 from social media is passing through France’s parliament. Britain is also considering similar measures.
Spain’s proposed regulation would give parents clear backing to set limits and would ease social pressure for children worried about missing out, said Diana Diaz, director of the ANAR Foundation for at-risk children and adolescents.
The recent explosion of AI-generated content, and public outcry over reports of Musk’s Grok AI chatbot generating non-consensual sexual images, including of minors, has fuelled debate over the risks of such online content.
But there was no unanimous agreement that social media harms adolescents, said Jose Cesar Perales, a professor in experimental psychology at the University of Granada.
Sanchez said prosecutors would explore ways to investigate possible legal infractions by Grok, as well as by TikTok and Instagram, part of Meta.
The proposed ban would be implemented as part of a change to an existing bill on digital protection for minors being debated in parliament, a government spokesperson said.
About 82% of people in Spain said they believed children under 14 should be banned from social media, according to an Ipsos poll on education published in August last year. That was up from 73% in 2024.
With Reuters
