Irene C., from Madrid, is 14 years old. In 2024, her parents gave her her first mobile phone. A gift accompanied by a condition: signing a contract committing to responsible device use and respecting imposed time limits. One clause allows her mother to supervise her Instagram and TikTok accounts. Irene mainly uses Instagram to communicate with her friends and TikTok for entertainment purposes.
"Prohibiting the use of social media is a bad decision," says the young girl. "They are going to take away teenagers' communication channels."
Pablo P., 16, lives in Móstoles. His parents allow him to use the phone for half an hour on weekdays, while on weekends, he has more freedom to chat, watch short football videos, and game tutorials. He uses the same social networks as Irene. "I don't care about the prohibition because nowadays we have many ways to bypass device credentials," he admits. "On the internet and on ChatGPT, there is information on how to do it."
However, not all kids are as relaxed as him. The majority expressed alarm to their parents and friends after Pedro Sánchez's speech on February 3. That day, in Doha, the Prime Minister announced a crusade against social media by prohibiting its use for minors under 16.
Before speaking with social media experts, traveling to the antipodes, and recalling Mark Zuckerberg's courtroom sweat in California, we considered it important for this report to know the opinion of the real protagonists: children and teenagers. Once done, we do the same as Irene and Pablo's parents when they exceed mobile usage: we take it away. And we return to the (boring) adult world.
The Prohibition - capitalized because if that's how the Prohibition was written, how can we not do the same with the blackout of Facebook, X, or TikTok - has strong support in Spain, both politically and socially. After Pedro Sánchez's announcement, the leader of the main opposition party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, recalled that the Popular Party had already proposed prohibiting access for children under 14. The latest proof of national consensus is the BBVA Foundation survey published this week: eight out of ten Spaniards support the Prohibition.
The prevailing opinion in Spain is also present worldwide. In an ideologically polarized world, it is fascinating how the idea that social media harms children and teenagers is so prevalent among citizens and now their leaders. It doesn't matter which party they vote for or whether they live in a democracy or under a dictatorship. All parents are concerned. That's why 2026 is shaping up to be the year of the most significant pressure on tech companies regarding youth protection. And not even the excellent relationship of their main magnates with Donald Trump can change that.
In Europe alone, 14 countries are considering taking the step towards Prohibition. Some are already in the process. In January, France became the first nation on the continent to legislate the prohibition of social media use for minors (in this case, raising the age to 15), an initiative that Spain, the UK, Austria, and others intend to follow.
Concern has also reached the two major world powers, the US and China, despite being much more lenient on regulatory issues than Europe. While the Chinese have their own internet - with local social networks and control mechanisms only admissible in a dictatorship - they have already taken measures. Beijing has imposed a curfew on gamers, heavy users of video games, and has limited TikTok access to 40 minutes daily.
Meanwhile, in the US, various states impose age restrictions on tech companies, but what is of greater historical significance is what is happening these days in Los Angeles. There, a court is deliberating whether social media are products that generate addiction and cause harm to individuals and their families. This case is reminiscent of the major lawsuits against tobacco companies in the 1990s when the debate was whether companies knew in advance the harm caused by smoking. Its resolution could be crucial in terms of jurisprudence and could trigger the more than 1,500 similar lawsuits to become immediate future multimillion-dollar compensations to be paid by the companies.
However, there is another less publicized place that is drawing the attention of not only digital educators but also Silicon Valley and the foreign ministries of 40 countries: Australia.
The continent-country has been a pioneer in this rebellion since it banned accounts for minors under 16 last December. In other words, Australia is a digital laboratory with millions of guinea pigs. This government initiative will allow studying not only the impact on minors' mental health but also to what extent States can impose themselves on companies on such sensitive matters.
This prohibition is an experiment that will be studied by policymakers worldwide, so it is essential to understand its impact. For this, we need to equip ourselves with the most rigorous science based on best practices," acknowledges Kathryn Modecki, a Psychology professor at the University of Western Australia.
Modecki leads a unique study from the Kids Research Institute that investigates the impact of the Prohibition on families in her country.
"We want to measure its short-term effects, in six months, and also in the longer term," says the academic. "When we have the final results, it will be time to ask: who do these findings apply to? Will it be a subgroup of parents or will it be more generalizable to the entire population?"
Modecki has a sample of over 2,000 parents of children aged 9 to 16, chosen "by lottery" and contacted via message across the country. The profiles include all social classes and ethnic groups.
The selected parents were asked a series of questions before the law came into effect on December 10 to inform researchers about their children's social media supervision. The goal of Modecki's work is to find out if censoring social media helps or hinders children's education.
In nearly three months of prohibition, virtual Australia has seen many changes. The Canberra government has acknowledged the blackout of 4.7 million accounts. A significant number considering that the affected population - between 8 and 15 years old - is 2.5 million. It is worth noting that each teenager, like Irene and Pablo, is generally connected to several social networks. According to Unicef, in Spain, four out of ten children aged 10 to 12 are registered on three or more. So, if this holds true in Australia, it means there are many active minor accounts.
As Pablo mentioned at the beginning of the report, it doesn't seem difficult to find ways to bypass a government crackdown.
In Australia, experts acknowledge they still don't know the most used method by those who remain active on social media despite the law. The resource that seemed most likely was the use of Virtual Private Networks (VPN). This is a security tool that allows changing your geographical location and fooling trackers. According to The Economist, in the UK, VPNs saw a surge last summer to circumvent the new law requiring age verification to access porn sites.
This doesn't seem to be the case in Australia. Earlier this year, Apptopia, a platform dedicated to app and device data analysis, detected that the use of the top 10 VPN apps in the country had only grown by 10%.
Another possible escape route was Australian kids migrating to less mainstream social networks that have not been banned, but for now, data does not support this theory either.
So, where are the disguised Australian minors who post photos on Instagram, comment on Reddit, or chat on Discord while playing Call of Duty?
The most plausible option is the migration of under-16s to messaging apps like WhatsApp or Telegram and gaming services like Roblox that allow community interaction.
This trend has raised initial alarms. Curiously, complaints come from a sector that initially seemed very supportive of prohibition: parent and child protection associations. They denounce the risk that children may now navigate even more sinister and less monitored environments than mass consumption networks.
"There is fear that teenagers will stop sharing their harmful internet experiences with adults and that the most vulnerable individuals who rely on social media for support and information will be left isolated without them," says Professor Modecki.
Australian Kirra Pendergast has been a digital safety educator for three decades. A victim of online harassment, at 43, she drew inspiration from this negative experience to establish Safe on Social, a consultancy advising governments and companies with offices in Sydney, New York, Florence, and London.
'It's important to clarify something, because the media is giving a misleading view of what's happening here,' she says before answering any questions. 'Australia has not banned children from accessing social media, but has banned social media from accessing our children. This means that responsibility has shifted from parents and children to companies.'
Pendergast represents both sides of the great social media dilemma. She herself has belonged to both sides of the conflict.
On the one hand, there are the hardline prohibitionists, who see a ban as the only way to preserve the mental health, social relationships and learning abilities of young children. To identify them, we could say that they are followers of Jonathan Haidt, the best-selling social psychologist whose essay The Anxious Generation (Deusto) has alerted many parents around the world.
Opposing them is a much smaller group, according to surveys, who consider the arguments for censorship to be weak and its benefits uncertain. They believe that the psychological damage caused by social media is limited, that banning it increases children's isolation and that it will not eliminate cyberbullying or the threat of predators.
If Kirra Pendergast had been asked three years ago, she would have been on the side of the sceptics. 'My position has evolved,' she says. Today, she is a staunch advocate of the ban, like an Elliot Ness of social media.
This development stemmed from a very unpleasant experience during a talk on network security that he gave at a school. He was explaining the dangers of bullying and sextortion to 12- and 13-year-old students when he mentioned the case of some girls who had been harassed on social media. Suddenly, a group of young people began to insult the victims. The teachers tried to silence them, but then a teenage girl in the front row joined in with a barrage of insults. The talk had to be cancelled and Pendergast left the classroom on the verge of tears.
Shocked, the educator began to investigate and was able to link the comments made by the young people who had jumped in with certain arguments used by the most popular toxic influencers in Australia. She then verified that the students who had posted sexist messages followed them on social media. 'The evidence I found was overwhelming,' she says.
Given her experience, we asked her to shed light on this digital maze of government interventionism.
'Although it is still too early to draw conclusions, we can see greater scrutiny of platforms, much more serious conversations about age verification for children, and regulatory pressure.' He adds as a warning: 'Damage reduction will depend not only on legislation, but also on its enforcement. Laws do not change ecosystems overnight. Their implementation and proper design do.'
Australian law requires platforms to comply with safety codes related to children's use, control of harmful content and reporting mechanisms. Failure to comply results in heavy fines.
One of the most complex issues has been how companies can verify the age of children.
'Most systems worldwide are not really verifiers, but often a user declaration or an estimation of behaviour. They are imperfect.' Despite these difficulties, Pendergast is optimistic. "Governments are exploring technologies that preserve privacy and do not require identity data storage. Nothing is perfect, but the excuses I have been hearing for so long are no longer valid. The goal must be proportionate, i.e., to significantly hinder children's access to adult platforms while protecting their privacy and avoiding excessive surveillance."
Achieving this goal would break the line of defence that technology companies have maintained for years, excusing themselves by saying that they cannot prevent children from cheating. The latest evidence of this strategy is last week's statement by Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, at the Los Angeles trial that is causing so much fear in Silicon Valley. Zuckerberg blamed users for sneaking in under the age of 13, the legal age of access for the platforms themselves.
Well, if Australian law proves anything, it is that Zuckerberg could not say that if he had to stand trial in Sydney.
For Pendergast, these initiatives that are beginning to emerge in so many countries are the first step toward truly holding tech companies accountable. To achieve this, she believes, legislators must focus on preventing companies from accessing children, not the other way around. "Language is important. For two decades, social media platforms have argued that technology was neutral. That argument is crumbling. The design decisions behind their tools generate behavioral outcomes. The behavior of their algorithms is not neutral, nor are data mining models, nor surveillance capitalism."
"You seem very convinced."
"We are witnessing a global realignment of power."
"The regulatory framework in Europe is, in that sense, very similar to the Australian one, placing any company that launches a service in the information society in a position of guarantor." A concrete ban by countries would severely limit the interpretive power of tech companies and reduce their room for maneuver in court, giving judges a clearer framework for assessing damages.
"That's why companies are at odds with Europe and clamoring for deregulation," explains Ricard Martínez, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Valencia. "We're in a struggle similar to the one waged by the bourgeoisie against absolutism in the 19th century, with all-powerful monarchs who considered themselves above the law and who wielded informational power that allowed them to make decisions for us and define our behavior. They were also capable of condemning us to buy what they wanted, when they wanted. Our hope against these feudal lords is regulation."
What is undeniable is that the tech industry produces extraordinarily sophisticated products. They are fascinating, seductive, and in some cases so addictive they seem designed by Satan himself. From endless scrolling to continuous videos, not to mention the algorithms that curate content to suit our tastes, the internet is now an amusement park whose rides are designed by the world's most brilliant engineers.
The thing is, both Pendergast and Martínez, 17,400 kilometers apart, issue a warning: the roller coaster is broken. What should a parent like Irene's or Pablo's do? The dilemma is figuring out what's best: tell their child to ride carefully or ban them from the amusement park altogether.
"Should we ask for a refund if a ride isn't working?"
Pendergast answers without hesitation.
"No, we have to fix what's broken."