GoKawiilGovernments across Europe are weighing stricter regulations to limit teens' use of social media after Australia became the first country to enforce a sweeping ban for under-16s in December. Spain , France, and Denmark are among the countries weighing similar measures.
The U.K. government has launched a consultation on children's social media use to gather views of parents and young people on whether a social media ban would be effective.
It comes after U.K. lawmakers voted against a proposal to include a social media ban for under-16s in the a piece of child welfare legislation being debated earlier this month.
Online safety organizations Ofcom and the Information Commissioner's Office said they had written to YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat on Thursday, urging them to tackle a broad range of child safety issues, from implementing stringent age verification measures to tackling child grooming on their platforms.
U.K. regulators are calling on social media giants to enforce stricter protection for children on their platforms after a blanket ban for under-16s was rejected by lawmakers.
Ofcom said it had written to social media platforms calling on them to report on what they're doing to keep children off their platforms, with a deadline of April 30 for them to respond.
Its demands included better enforcement of minimum age requirements, preventing strangers from being able to contact children, safer content for teens, and an end to product testing, such as AI, on children.
Tech giants are "failing to put children's safety at the heart of their products," and are falling short on promises to keep children safe online," said Ofcom CEO Melanie Dawes.
"Without the right protections, like effective age checks, children have been routinely exposed to risks they didn't choose, on services they can't realistically avoid," Dawes said.
The ICO published an open letter on Thursday, saying that social media platforms need to use facial age estimation, digital ID, or one-time photo matching to get better at age verification.
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