Norway’s government, in the autumn, will set an age limit for social media use in the Nordic country, Jonas Gahr Støre has pledged.
“We must get an age limit that we can enforce. And we have to get stricter regulation of functionality and content that is obviously harmful to children,” he told public broadcaster NRK.
The exact age at which users will need to be to log into social media in Norway has not been determined yet, but the limit will be strictly enforced through the use of electronic identification to verify the user’s age.
The PM also said that the government would ensure that content aimed at children and young people would be regulated more strictly, with these rules also applying to things like autoplay and algorithms.
“We are facing challenges that we cannot solve alone. It is a task for politics to address this,” Støre said.
A platform for electronic identification has yet to be clarified. However, e-IDs are fairly widespread in Norway and are issued by both the public and private sectors.
The Norwegian Data Protection Authority and Norwegian Consumer Council have previously criticised the proposal to use a digital identification system to limit who can access social media.
“Age verification challenges the basic rights children have, such as the right to participate, freedom of expression and information gathering,” Inger Lise Blyverket, director of the Norwegian Consumer Council, told the newspaper Klassekampen in May.
Meanwhile, the data protection authority said that those who do not have access to an electronic ID may have to choose more obscure and possibly unsafe platforms.
The Children’s Ombudsman expressed scepticism that an age limit can solve the challenges children face regarding social media and pointed out that most social media already have a recommended age limit.
Even when the government begins with its plans to introduce an age limit for social media in the autumn it still currently isn’t clear when the regulations would actually be introduced.
According to an opinion poll from the data analysis firm Opinion, a majority of Norwegians are in favour of introducing an age limit for social media use.
A majority of the parties in Norway’s parliament are also in favour of introducing restrictions.
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