Australia showed the world that it’s possible to enforce restrictions on youth social media use. Now, that concept is spreading across the globe, and its arrival in Spain presents a curious case.
At the World Government Summit in Dubai, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced his government’s plan to “protect” children from the “digital Wild West” by requiring social media platforms to set up “effective age-verification systems.” Sánchez didn’t say which platforms would be included in the regulation, but in his speech, he directed specific criticisms at X, TikTok, and Instagram.
Sánchez is not the only world leader attempting to follow Australia’s lead. Denmark has signalled that its government will impose similar restrictions, and lawmakers in Greece, France, and the U.K. are eager to follow suit.
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When the Australian government first announced its plan to limit teens’ access to major social media platforms, it received a mixed response. The rubric used to determine which platforms would be affected was murky at best, and critics questioned whether Australia could actually keep teens off social media.
By threatening to fine tech companies if they fail to institute age-verification checks on their platforms, Australia found an enforcement mechanism that worked. Though some Australian youngsters have employed VPNs or other workarounds to evade enforcement, many accounts have been culled since the ban went into effect last December. Meta reported in January that it had removed 550,000 accounts to comply with the crackdown.
Even as Meta fulfilled the Australian government’s demands, it urged lawmakers to rethink and find a “better way forward.” Reddit took its dissent one step further by filing a legal challenge against the ban.
In Spain, the effort to restrict under-16 social media use could meet another hurdle: the teens themselves. Put simply, the Iberian nation is one of the world’s premier creator hotbeds. Over the past year, numerous Spanish hubs have cracked our ranking of the 50 most-watched YouTube channels in the world. On Twitch, superstars like Ibai and TheGrefg have broken into the mainstream with high-profile events that have shattered viewership records. Their support for the Kings League helped the streamer-led soccer competition attract 90,000 in-person attendees at Barcelona’s Camp Nou stadium.
If Spain includes Twitch and YouTube in its social media ban, it will handicap some of its most promising homegrown talents. If those platforms receive exemptions, however, the ban may not be effective. The creator profession has become an aspirational goal in a nation with a middling economy — in that context, is a youth social media ban worthwhile or counterproductive?
Perhaps these bans are inevitable, but Spain will be a major test. If PM Sánchez can enforce his proposed crackdown, he will show that governments have the power to curb youth social media addiction — even in one of the world’s most creator-obsessed countries.
