Spain to ban social media for minors, pursue criminal action against platforms
Spain is moving toward banning minors from social media and pursuing stronger legal action against major platforms, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced.
Speaking at the World Governments Summit in Dubai on Tuesday, Sánchez said social media platforms have become a “failed state” and argued that governments must take back control to protect children and enforce the law.
“We were told that social media would become a tool for global understanding and cooperation, a vehicle for freedom, transparency, and accountability,” Sánchez said. “But the opposite has happened. Social media has become a failed state, a place where laws are ignored and crime is endured.”
Sánchez cited allegations involving major platforms, including the spread of disinformation, foreign interference in elections, and failures to prevent abuse involving minors.
“Just in the last year alone, TikTok has been accused of tolerating malicious accounts that shared AI-generated child abuse materials,” Sánchez said. “Just last week the owner of X, a migrant himself, used his personal account to amplify this information about the sovereign decision by my government, the regularization of 500,000 migrants. The same platform has allowed its AI group to generate illegal sexual content.”
Sánchez also accused Instagram of being linked to allegations of spying on Android users and said Facebook has been used to spread misinformation and foreign interference during elections.
Sánchez said Spain will change its laws to hold social media executives legally accountable for violations on their platforms, including criminal liability for failing to remove illegal or hateful content.
He said the government will also criminalize the algorithmic manipulation and amplification of illegal material, arguing that disinformation is created, promoted, and spread for profit and that platforms should no longer be allowed to “hide behind code.”
Spain will also introduce a system to measure and expose how platforms “fuel hate and polarization,” laying the groundwork for future legal and financial penalties.
Sánchez said his government will ban social media access for minors under 16 and require platforms to implement effective age-verification systems. He added that Spain will work with prosecutors to investigate and pursue alleged violations by Grok, TikTok, and Instagram.
Spain’s plan follows a similar law implemented recently in Australia, where social media accounts are banned for users under 16 and platforms face penalties if they fail to block minors.
Reuters reported Tuesday that Greece is also “very close” to announcing a similar social media ban for children under 15, citing a senior government source.
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
