PRIME Minister Pedro Sanchez says his government will ban social media access for children aged under 16 in Spain and will order platforms to introduce age-verification systems.
Sanchez was speaking on Tuesday at the World Government Summit in Dubai where he announced several measures to guarantee a ‘safe’ digital environment.
Pedro Sanchez said: “Social media has become a failed state, where laws are ignored, and crimes are tolerated.”
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“Our children are exposed to a space they were never meant to navigate alone and we will no longer accept that.”
”We will protect them from the digital Wild West,” he added.
Australia in December became the first country to ban social media for children under 16 with the moved watched closely by other countries.
Sanchez said his government would also introduce a new Bill next week to hold social media executives accountable for illegal and hate-speech content.
It will also criminalise algorithmic manipulation and the amplification of illegal content.
He added that prosecutors would explore ways to investigate possible legal infractions by billionaire Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok, as well as social media platforms TikTok and Instagram.
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