Online Safety Tracker
Age-Based Restrictions benchmark expanded to monitor the growing list of countries implementing restrictions on social media and/or smartphones
In response to the growing public conversation surrounding the impact of social media and digital technologies on children, we recently launched our new Online Safety Tracker. The trend towards implementing age-based restrictions on social media is spreading rapidly: half of the countries currently considering age restrictions only announced their intentions to do so in the last five months. Following Australia’s adoption of the Social Media Minimum Age Act on 10 December 2025, the first legislation to restrict social media access for under 16s, a total of 34 countries have now either enforced, adopted, proposed, or are discussing some form of age-based restrictions on social media use. While 24 countries are considering complete bans, 10 are considering at least partial restrictions, which include methods such as requiring parental consent, limiting harmful or addictive features for minor accounts and imposing time-based restrictions. As a result of the changes we made last week, we also now include countries which are only in the “early discussions” stage of implementing restrictions, – see Figure for our definitions of each stage of the legislative process.
So far, suggested restrictions tend to fall around the 15/16 age bracket, though proposed limits range from as low as 13 (in Argentina) to as high as 18 (in the UAE). 70% of countries that have adopted or enforce age-based restrictions do not currently require specific methods of age assurance to be used, although in rare instances, such as in Vietnam and China, age verification is tied to proving real identity. We also include seven additional countries with restrictions on children’s data processing and 14 countries that have banned smartphones in schools. It’s likely that more countries will follow suit in the near future, with bans in Turkey and France planned to come into force before the end of the year. Our benchmark will be updated on an ongoing basis as new developments occur.
