Social media age restrictions for children: Why they are rising and what comes next

Across the OECD, the number of countries considering age restrictions on social media use is growing, and quickly. At the end of 2023, only one OECD Member or accession country was considering social media age restrictions. Two years later, the total had risen to 12, with one law already in force. Within another four months, the count had reached 25, more than a five-fold increase in just 16 months.

While social media can offer children opportunities for connection and creativity, it can also present serious risks. Problematic social media use marked by preoccupation, escapism and conflict is on the rise and particularly affects girls. The momentum behind legislative action also reflects a growing recognition that many platforms have not been designed with children's safety or well-being in mind and have failed to effectively enforce their own minimum age requirements.

Despite variation in legal traditions, regulatory cultures and political contexts, countries are landing in a narrow minimum age range: almost all the proposals and laws cluster around minimum ages of 15 or 16. Australia, which moved first and set 16 as its threshold, appears to have anchored the debate. Every law that has been enacted to date uses 16 as the minimum age for access to social media. A small number of jurisdictions have considered lower thresholds, typically in the 13–14 range. These include Austria, Canada, Thailand and in some cases, the United States, where different proposals envisage different age thresholds.

Of the 25 countries with activity recorded as of April 2026, the overwhelming majority are in the "under consideration" category. Only three countries, Australia, Brazil and Indonesia, have laws in force. Twenty-two are still at the proposal or consultation stage. This reflects the reality of how policy is made. Several years may pass before they cross over into the other categories, if they do at all. The more telling observation is how long it took to get here. Social media has been part of children's lives for nearly two decades; the policy response may be, in many ways, just beginning.

Some lawmakers may also wish to see how such laws perform in other countries before making a commitment to implement one in their own jurisdiction, and it is still too early to draw meaningful conclusions about how the implemented laws are performing. In any case, the hard work of designing workable and effective social media age restrictions and age assurance systems to enforce them, defining what compliance requires of platforms, and determining how to enforce these rules across borders has just begun.

The risks children face online cannot be mitigated by focusing on access alone. The dangers are too varied, complex and numerous and, in any case, existing age assurance policies and practices leave substantial legal, jurisdictional, and practical gaps. But such measures can be an important part of a larger child safety framework that includes safety by design rather than as a retrofit.  

The pace of legislative activity is, in one sense, an expression of genuine public and political concern about the well-being of children online. That concern is well-founded. OECD research has documented the failure of existing age limits to prevent children from accessing platforms well below the stated thresholds, the inadequacy of self-reported age data, and the specific risks that problematic social media use poses, particularly for girls.

But speed without co-ordination carries its own risks. If numerous countries each develop their own social media restrictions for children, and consequent age assurance frameworks, enforcement mechanisms, and definitions of compliance, global platforms will face a patchwork of requirements that is difficult to navigate, while children will continue to receive inconsistent protections depending on where they happen to live.

The convergence on 15 and 16 as minimum ages is an encouraging signal of international alignment, but it needs to be followed by deeper alignment on what that threshold means in practice. Effective social media restrictions also require rethinking what protection means beyond a number. Restricting access is one instrument among several. Equally important are the design features of platforms that shape the experience of young users, regardless of whether they are nominally permitted to access them. Ultimately, the challenge for policymakers is to ensure that children can access safe, beneficial and age-appropriate experiences online. Age assurance, platform design and age-appropriate service provision are concurrent challenges, not sequential ones.

It is also crucial to acknowledge the debate unfolding in technical forums, moving the conversation from the need to assure age towards the question of how it can be done without creating new systemic harms to privacy or freedom of expression. If poorly designed, age assurance mechanisms can collect more data than is necessary, increase exposure to security breaches and shut out users without formal identity documents. This emphasises the crucial role of direct co-operation between online safety and privacy authorities, who ask for consistent approaches to age assurance, to protect minors while complying with data protection principles. 

The OECD is tracking this landscape precisely because the pace of change makes co-ordination more important, not less. Our role is to offer countries a durable forum for evidence-based policy development, one that can keep pace with the regulatory wave while ensuring that the measures adopted are coherent, rights-respecting and effective for children.

The next few years will be critical. As more legislation takes effect the evidence will grow, and the policy choices that governments make will shape the digital environment for children for decades to come. The OECD will be there to support that process.