Greece Bans Social Media Use for Children Under 15

Greece Bans Social Media Use for Children Under 15
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Greece’s parliament approved legislation on Friday banning children under the age of 15 from using social media, joining a growing number of countries imposing restrictions on young people’s access to these platforms.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced plans for the ban last April, using TikTok, one of the most popular social media platforms among young people in Greece, to explain what he described as a “difficult but necessary” measure.

Following heated parliamentary debate that began on Thursday and continued into Friday, Mitsotakis’s conservative New Democracy party used its parliamentary majority to pass the bill without support from any other party, according to the Athens-Macedonian News Agency (ANA). The opposition socialist PASOK party abstained after proposing an alternative bill that would ban social media use for children under 13 and require parental supervision for those aged 13 and 14. Other left-wing and nationalist parties voted against the legislation.

The law, scheduled to take effect on January 1, will require social media companies to verify users’ ages and impose strict penalties on companies that fail to comply.

Australia was the first country to introduce a social media ban for children under 16. More than 20 countries have since passed similar legislation, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).