Spain’s Social Media Ban For Under-16s: Here’s what parents need to know

This is a special feature from Dr. Fiona Ghiglione, Assistant Professor at Berklee Valencia, with over 20 years of experience supporting youth and parents.

In December 2025, Australia became the first country in the world to pass a law banning social media for children under 16. As an Australian living abroad and watching this unfold, I followed it carefully. Since then, at least 20 countries have begun some form of active legislative movement on the same question. Spain is now proposing its own social media ban.  

In February, Prime Minister Sánchez told the World Government Summit that Spain would ban social media for under-16s. “We will protect them from the digital Wild West,” he said, publicly declaring Spain’s intention. But few people know that the bill itself has been moving through parliament since March 2025, and still needs to pass.  

If you are a parent, you probably have many questions. Let’s explore a bit of what is being proposed, some of the complexities, and what we can do now.  

What Spain’s social media law proposes 

The bill – Ley Orgánica para la protección de las personas menores de edad en los entornos digitales – contains four measures worth knowing about.  

• It plans to raise the minimum age for social media from 14 to 16.  
• It will require device manufacturers to include free parental controls on all internet-connected devices.  
• It will require schools to explicitly regulate the use of digital devices in classrooms,  breaks, and extracurricular activities.  
• And it would hold executives personally accountable for violations on their platforms, ending what the government calls their legal impunity.  

While no final decision has been made on which platforms will be included in the ban,  TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, including its AI, Grok, are all on the cards.  

Will Spain’s social media ban pass? 

Honestly, it’s uncertain. As an Organic Law, meaning one that touches on fundamental rights, it requires an absolute majority in Congress, which is a higher bar than most legislation. The main opposition, Partido Popular, filed over 50 amendments rather than opposing the bill outright, which suggests that broad political will exists even if the final text is still being negotiated. 

The harder problem: how do you actually verify age? 

This is one of the many complex issues involved in the ban. Biometric facial scans raise serious privacy concerns. Once that data exists, it can be used anywhere. Scanning a national ID card hands sensitive personal data to platforms like Instagram, with no guarantee of how it might be used if the platform is bought or changes hands. 

The most promising solution is the EU’s planned digital identity wallet – an age verification app, free, fully anonymous, and open source, built around existing passport or national ID  infrastructure. Several countries are already planning to adopt it. 

What you can do right now, whatever happens 

Whatever happens, the conversation with your children cannot wait for parliament. Here are some things that I do with my own kids and recommend to the parents and tweens I work with:  

• Ask what apps they use, what content they enjoy, and why. Try the platforms yourself. We grew up in a different world, and if we want to guide our kids, we need to understand where they are coming from. Also, be honest about your own screen habits; children are acutely aware of parental hypocrisy around phones.  
• Explain how this technology works: companies spend billions designing devices to capture attention and trigger dopamine. Knowing that changes how you relate to it.  
• And make it an ongoing conversation. The digital landscape moves fast. One serious talk is never enough and just won’t cut it to really protect and help our kids.  

Justice Minister Félix Bolaños told parliament that the average age at which children in Spain get a mobile phone is 11 years old. That is also the average age at which minors first access pornographic content. 

Whether or not a law passes, the only thing that will reliably change those numbers is for families to talk openly and to keep talking.  

If you’re looking for resources and structured ways to open up these conversations at home, I have a series of resources on my website, Mothering Girls, designed to get children thinking about this before it becomes a crisis.

^{Featured image courtesy of Bicanski – https://pixnio.com/author/bicanski, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons}