MADRID, February 3, 2026, 16:09 CET
- Spain plans to add an under-16 social media ban to a minors’ digital protection bill now in parliament.
- Prime minister says a separate bill would hold platform executives accountable for illegal and hate-speech content.
- Proposal comes as more European governments weigh teen bans and tougher cross-border enforcement.
Spain will table a bill next week to hold social media executives accountable for illegal and hate-speech content, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Tuesday. His government also wants to bar under-16s from using social media platforms. Reuters
The move raises the stakes for tech groups already facing tougher oversight across Europe, where governments say apps are built to keep users hooked and can expose children to harmful material. It lands as the European Union’s Digital Services Act — a rulebook forcing platforms to police illegal content — collides with free-speech concerns. The debate flared this month after reports that Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot generated nonconsensual sexual images, including of minors.
Greece is close to announcing a similar ban for children under 15, a senior government source said. Australia became the first country to prohibit social media access for under-16s in December, and proposals are also being weighed in the United Kingdom and France. Governments have pointed to rising screen time and worries about young people’s mental wellbeing.
Sanchez outlined the plan while speaking at the World Governments Summit in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. “We will no longer accept that,” he told delegates, promising to protect minors from the “digital Wild West.”
He also said Spain had joined five other European countries in a Coalition of the Digitally Willing to coordinate cross-border regulation and enforcement. The group will meet in coming days, he said, without naming the other members.
Sanchez said the draft would also criminalise “algorithmic manipulation” — changes to recommendation systems that can boost posts — and punish the amplification of illegal content. He also called for age checks that are “not just check boxes”, alongside a system to track hate speech online.
Sanchez said prosecutors would explore possible legal infractions by Grok, as well as by TikTok and Instagram, which are part of Meta. Representatives of X, Google, part of Alphabet, TikTok, Snapchat and Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
At the summit, Sanchez accused the world’s biggest tech firms of letting illegal content spread, including child sex abuse and nonconsensual deepfakes — AI-made images or videos that can look real. He said governments should stop “turning a blind eye”. Australia’s ban makes platforms liable if they fail to stop children opening accounts, while Denmark and France have advanced similar under-15 restrictions. Apnews
Spain’s left-wing coalition has repeatedly complained about hate speech, pornographic content and disinformation on social media, arguing it hits young users hardest. Abc
A government spokesperson said the under-16 ban would be inserted into an existing bill on digital protections for minors that is now being debated in parliament. Details of the age-verification model were not provided.
Public support looks broad. A 30-country survey by Ipsos last August found 82% of Spaniards backed banning social media for children under 14, up from 73% in 2024.
Miguel Abad, a 19-year-old student in Madrid, said the idea could nudge children back to playing together instead of staring at phones in parks. In Australia, platforms deactivated nearly 5 million teen accounts within weeks of its ban taking effect, the internet regulator said last month.
Critics warn the plan could slide into censorship and prove hard to enforce on global platforms. Pepa Millan of the far-right Vox accused the government of seeking to “cling to power”, while age checks that genuinely block minors can raise privacy and practical questions.
