Petteri Pyyny
28 Mar 2026 6:17
Austria has announced its plan to introduce a legislative change that would prohibit the use of social media by children under 14 years of age.
Austria's initiative is part of a widespread populist trend where several countries are considering restricting children's online use to protect young people from the harmful effects of social media. According to BBC information, the Austrian government has already held extensive negotiations on the matter, but details regarding the implementation and timeline of the law have not yet been confirmed. According to the government, the framework of the legislative initiative could be ready as early as June 2026, after which it would move to a more detailed evaluation process.
The first country to categorically ban all social media services for minors is Australia, where social media was banned for under 16s just before the start of Australian schoolchildren's summer holidays, in December 2025. Similar restrictions have either come into force or are planned elsewhere to some extent: in France, the age limit for social media services is 15 years, and Spain and Ireland are working on restrictions for under 15s.
Until now, all social media services have prohibited their use by under 13s in their terms of service, but the age limit has not been enforced, and it has been possible to circumvent it by lying about one's age when joining the service.
Now, the big change is that states demanding strict age limits also require at least some degree of strong age verification for services. However, this means that at the same time, privacy disappears in social media services.
Strong age verification is practically possible only if all users are forced to verify their age through strong authentication - for example, with government approved digital IDs in select European countries. In many countries, however, the only somewhat functional way to do this is to scan a driver's license or passport and send it to the service. However, at the same time, user privacy is lost, as the age verification and the user's real identity will inevitably leave a trace in some system after this.
What makes Austria's haste somewhat peculiar is that the European Union is already developing an age verification mechanism, which will also be implemented in Finland. In the EU's solution, the social media service never gains access to its users' personal data, or even their exact age - only the information that the user is an adult.
Another significant problem relates to which services are considered social media services. This problem was encountered in Australia, where the list of what counts as a social media service is still somewhat vague. Facebooks and Instagrams are easy, but traditional discussion forums, for example, are already a big question mark.