In order to safeguard children, Norway is now working to enforce a strict minimum age limit on social media to 15. Jonas Gahr Store, Norwegian Prime Minister stated that it would be an uphill tasks and requested politicians to protect children from this power of algorithm. He feels that the industry is misusing social media platforms and this could make consumers single minded.
As per a research by Norwegian Media Authority, the current minimum age limit is 13 but despite the law, 50% of nine-year-old, 58% of 10-year-old and 72% of 11-year-old are on social media as of now.
The government is now working to bring in more safeguards for preventing children from getting around age restrictions which includes amendment of Personal Data Act so that social media users must be 15 years old to agree that platform could handle their personal data and develop an age verification barrier for social media. This would send a strong signal across and children could be protected from harmful content on social media. It would be an uphill battle as it would be required to fight against big tech giants but this is what politics is for.
Kjersti Toppe who is the minister for children and families is working for stricter online regulation for kids and is meant to help parents, its’s about giving security to parents to say no.
Other countries are following suit also and one of them is Australia which has announced that it would ban social media for children and teenagers, though age limit has not been decided but it would be anywhere between 14 to 16. On the other hand, France is also conducting a trial on ban on mobile phones for children under the age of 15 and if the trial gets successful then it could be introduced across the nation.
