A Philippine senator has introduced legislation that would bar children below the age of 16 from creating or maintaining social media accounts, citing mounting evidence that minors are spending significant time on these platforms with inadequate protection.
Senate Bill No. 2066, or the Social Media Safety for Children Act, was filed by Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian on April 22, drawing from data gathered by the Philippine Statistics Authority in partnership with the Department of Information and Communications Technology. The 2024 National Information and Communications Technology Household Survey found that 66% of children aged 10 to 16 had used social media in the three months before the survey, and that 92.4% of those children who go online maintain at least one social media account.
“It’s time to protect our children from the dangers brought by social media. Let us not wait for this to worsen before we take action,” Gatchalian said in a statement.
The bill designates the DICT as the primary enforcement body, with authority to monitor platforms, investigate violations, and issue Disabling Orders against non-compliant services. Should a platform fail to act on such orders, the DICT would be required to notify the National Telecommunications Commission to instruct internet service providers to block the relevant domains, URLs, or IP addresses.
Gatchalian acknowledged that existing laws — including the Special Protection of Children Against Abuse, Exploitation and Discrimination Act and the Anti-Online Sexual Abuse or Exploitation of Children Act — fall short of addressing children’s exposure to social media specifically, leaving a gap that his bill aims to fill.
Platform operators would face strict compliance requirements under the measure, including age verification systems, regular audits to deactivate underage accounts, parental control tools, and restrictions on design features such as autoplay and algorithm-driven notifications that can encourage excessive use. Repeated non-compliance would carry the risk of fines, suspension, or revocation of operations.
Gatchalian pointed to Australia’s Social Media Minimum Age Act of 2024 and Indonesia’s status as the first Southeast Asian country to impose a similar under-16 ban as precedents informing the Philippine proposal. In his bill, he noted that despite uneven internet access among children, “connected children engage with the internet frequently and for sustained periods, and social media participation among minors is nearly as prevalent as it is among adults.”
The measure also mandates compliance with the Data Privacy Act of 2012 throughout its implementation.
