A lawmaker has filed a bill banning children under 16 from using social media platforms, mimicking a landmark law passed by Australia, the first country to introduce such restrictions.

Senate Bill 2066, or the proposed Social Media Safety for Children Act, filed by Senator Win Gatchalian, seeks to prohibit children under 16 from registering, accessing, or maintaining accounts on all kinds of social media platforms.

The bill cited 2024 data from the National Information and Communications Technology Household Survey, showing that 66 percent of children aged 10 to 16 used the internet, and that 69.7 percent used it daily, if not almost every day.

The survey was conducted by the Philippine Statistics Authority and the Department of Information and Communications Technology.

On average, kids in this age group spend 3.93 hours per day, which is almost as much as the 4.5 hours per day spent by 17-year-olds and above. Most of these kids (92 percent) also maintain social media accounts.

“These figures demonstrate that although internet access among minors is not yet universal, connected children engage with the internet frequently and for sustained periods, and social media participation among minors is nearly as prevalent as it is among adults,” the bill reads.

According to the proponent, the passage of the bill is high-time to safeguard children from the harmful effects of social media.

The measure was modeled after the Australian law passed in 2024, which restricts social media use for anyone under 16. The law—first of its kind—took effect in December last year, and has since influenced other countries to impose similar restrictions.

In March of this year, Indonesia joined the bandwagon and adopted the policy, making it the first Southeast Asian country to enforce the ban.

 Some countries, like Denmark, France, Greece, and Slovenia, lowered the proposed minimum age for social media restrictions to 15.

Meanwhile, Germany, Malaysia, and Spain seek to set the minimum age at 16, similar to Australia.

If passed into law, Gatchalian’s proposal will mandate social media platform providers to adopt age and identity verification systems, conduct regular audits to deactivate accounts of age-restricted users, and establish reporting and response mechanisms for underage access, among other safeguards.

 While there are existing laws that protect children from abuse and exploitation, including those committed through digital means, punishable under Republic Acts 7610 and 11930, the senator argued that these “statutes are primarily penal and reactive in nature and do not establish a comprehensive regulatory framework governing minors' access to and exposure on social media platforms.”

As a result, he emphasized the need to implement preventive safeguards and strengthen the protection of children's physical, mental, moral, and social well-being in the digital environment.