Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard says the government wants to “take on the tech giants’ unscrupulous business methods”.
In an interview with newspaper Politiken, the minister went on to say tightening access to social media for kids “is about protecting our children and young people from going down rabbit holes that steal their time and expose them to content they shouldn’t see”.
Current rules relating to guardianship over minors prevent children from doing things like taking out loans or mobile phone contracts without the permission of their parents.
It is these rules the government also wants to apply to opening social media accounts, and has asked the relevant parts of the civil service to look in to the legislative viability of this.
Social media companies have guidelines in place advising against accounts for children under the age of 13.
However, opening an account does not require anything more than a declaration that you are old enough or have permission. According to Politiken’s figures, over half of children in Denmark have accessed at least one form of social media by their tenth birthday.
The government is reported to have become aware of the opportunity to increase control on the area after a complaint from children’s charity Børns Vilkår to the Danish Data Protection Agency (Datatilsynet).
New data protection laws meanwhile came into effect on January 1st which state that companies may not process data based on children under 15, raising the age from the previous 13.
Social media companies TikTok and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, have told Politiken that they do not intend to enforce the 15-year limit, citing data protection laws. This resulted in the complaint from Børns Vilkår according to the report.
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