Spain to ban social media access for under-16s

The Prime Minister of Spain, Pedro Sanchez, has announced that the country will ban access to social media for children under 16, saying platforms will be required to implement age-verification systems.

Sanchez made this known on Tuesday, February 3, 2026, as he announced several measures to guarantee a safe digital environment.

Sanchez’s left-wing coalition government has repeatedly complained about the proliferation of hate speech, pornographic content and disinformation on social media, saying it had negative effects on young people.

“Our children are exposed to a space they were never meant to navigate alone. We will no longer accept that,” Sanchez said as he addressed the World Government Summit in Dubai, calling on other European countries to implement similar measures.

“We will protect them from the digital Wild West,” he added.

Australia in December 2025 became the first country to ban social media for children under 16, a move being closely watched by other countries considering similar age-based measures, such as the United Kingdom and France.

UK mulls social media ban for children, tougher phone rules in schools

Sanchez said Spain had joined five other European countries that he dubbed the “Coalition of the Digitally Willing” to coordinate and enforce cross-border regulation.

The prime minister, who disclosed that the coalition will hold its first meeting in the coming days, did not say which countries were in the group.

Sanchez added that Spain will also introduce a bill next week to hold social media executives accountable for illegal and hate-speech content, as well as to criminalise algorithmic manipulation and the amplification of illegal content.

Among the measures he proposed was a system to track hate speech online while platforms would be required to introduce age verification systems that “were not just check boxes”.

He added that prosecutors would explore ways to investigate possible legal infractions by Elon Musk’s Grok, TikTok, and Instagram.

The Star