Malaysia has begun enforcing new rules barring children under 16 from opening social media accounts. The country brought the rules into force from Monday, joining a global push to strengthen online safety for young users.
Under the new rules, social media platforms must introduce age-verification systems and block accounts of those under 16. The rules apply to all platforms with at least eight million users, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
Companies that fail to comply face fines of up to 10 million ringgit. However, if children evade the law to open accounts, their parents will not be punished.
The government said the move is meant to protect children from harmful content, cyberbullying and platform features designed to foster addictive overuse.
Other countries, including Australia, Brazil and Indonesia, have already imposed age-based bans or conditions on children’s access to social media. Britain, France, Spain, Denmark, Thailand and South Korea are also researching or developing similar approaches.
Malaysia’s Communications and Multimedia Commission said the aim is not to keep children from using the internet, but to tackle online harms and press service providers to act responsibly in ensuring age-appropriate safeguards.
In a statement last month, the regulator said: “These measures will help strengthen the protection of children in the online environment and give parents added assurance in tackling increasingly complex digital risks.”
Platforms must now introduce “safety-by-design” features, including protections against manipulative design that encourages compulsive use, and must act against under-age accounts and harmful content. The technology companies have not yet detailed how they will implement the new rules. The regulator said platforms would be given a grace period to complete the rollout of age-verification systems.
In April, Meta’s Southeast Asia public policy director Clara Koh warned that Malaysia’s blanket ban on under-16s could backfire, pushing teenagers away from safer apps and into the unregulated, dangerous corners of the internet. She said Meta has already launched “Teen Accounts” for under-18s, which limit messaging, screen time and exposure to inappropriate content.
Malaysia imposed the ban amid growing global pressure over how social media affects children’s mental health and online safety. In March, a US jury ordered Meta and YouTube to pay millions of dollars over claims that a platform’s design had harmed a young user.
Although many parents support it, the move has also raised data-privacy concerns. Benjamin Loh, a social sciences lecturer at Monash University Malaysia, said: “It follows the global trend, but the requirement for government ID cards to verify age is creating concern.” He added that experience elsewhere shows age-based bans have yet to prove fully effective, and that with no penalty for parents, families can easily evade the law by creating accounts for their children. “It’s a big loophole. If regulators don’t fix it, the law will have very little effect in stopping children from using social media.”
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report