The Philippine House of Representatives yesterday approved a measure barring children under the age of 13 from social media. It has become the latest nation in Southeast Asia to tighten online safety provisions for minors.
The Safe and Friendly Environment for Kids in Digital Spaces Act was passed nearly unanimously, with 287 lawmakers voting in favor and three against, Inquirer.net reported.
The measures align the Philippines with a growing global effort to restrict minors’ access to social media platforms, in the interests of protecting them from cyberbullying, online fraud, and exposure to pornography, among other perceived threats.
In the Philippines, the legislative push has come after a string of incidents of school violence that the government believes were driven by online content. Last month, a 16-year-old shot dead two fellow students and injured eight others at a school in the southern Philippines, before taking his own life.
This followed a similar incident in the same region in August, in which a student at a Catholic school live-streamed himself shooting and killing a classmate before taking his own life. Also in June, two students shot and killed three and injured seven of their peers at a school in Tacloban, allegedly in response to bullying.
Under the proposed bill, children aged 13 and below would be prohibited from creating social media accounts. Meanwhile, a variety of restrictions would be put in place for those under 18 years of age. They will be barred from making online purchases and engaging with “gambling-like mechanisms” and other features that may pose “reasonably foreseeable and material risks” to their well-being. They would also be shielded from harmful ads and algorithmic short-video feeds that encourage limitless scrolling, according to Inquirer.net.
Filipinos are heavy users of social media. The country has the sixth-largest pool of Facebook users in the world, with more than 102 million accounts registered, and an estimated 78.1 million TikTok accounts, the seventh-largest of any country. According to research, Filipinos spend an average of nearly 34 hours per week on social media.
Yesterday’s vote came after the Senate’s recent endorsement of a similar but slightly stricter bill, which would ban a minor under 18 years of age from registering, accessing, using, or maintaining an account on any age-restricted social media platform. According to Inquirer.net, the two dueling bills are now set for a “legislative showdown,” and it remains to be seen exactly what the final version of the legislation will look like.
These moves follow Australia’s introduction of the world’s first social media ban for under 16s. The policy, which took effect in December of last year, forces social media firms to block users under 16 from having accounts on their platforms, rather than penalizing young people or their parents. Despite the lingering questions about the effectiveness of such restrictions, a long list of countries, including India, China, Türkiye, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and several in Europe, have since followed suit and announced the introduction of curbs of some kind.
Within Southeast Asia, Indonesia in March became the first nation to ban under-16s from having accounts on what it termed “high-risk” digital platforms, including YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Bigo Live, and Roblox. Malaysia started enforcing a similar ban on June 1, and ordered major social media platforms to conduct age verification against government-issued records. It has given them until January to implement the measure.
Vietnam also announced in July that it planned to introduce social media restrictions for minors. While Hanoi will not ban minors’ access to social media platforms, the new rules would bar under 16s from posting, commenting, sharing, or reacting to posts on social media.
