Senator Robin Padilla made a resounding call for the swift passage of bills imposing tighter restrictions — if not an outright ban — on children’s use of social media following the fatal shooting at Ateneo de Zamboanga University (ADZU) early Tuesday that left two students, including the shooter, dead.

Padilla believes that overexposure of children to social media is to blame for the alarming spate of school-related violence involving minors.

Tuesday’s deadly gun attack came less than two months after the 22 June high school shooting in Tacloban City that left three students dead and 20 others injured. The perpetrators were also minors, aged 14 and 15, and were enrolled in the school.

“Social media really has a huge impact on children. It is time for us to take action on laws concerning our youth and social media which can influence them to commit heinous acts,” Padilla said in a Facebook livestream.

Several bills pushing for stricter regulations, if not a blanket ban, of social media use for minors have been filed in the Senate as a result of the growing school-related violence.

Padilla’s Senate Bill 601 seeks to limit children’s interaction with and use of social media, establish a mandated screen time, and disable links redirecting them to external websites, among other things.

The bill was filed in July last year, but has remained pending at the committee level to date.

Senate President Win Gatchalian, meanwhile, would set the ban on social media access to children under 16.

If passed into law, Gatchalian’s SB 2066 will make the Philippines the latest country to prohibit children under 16 from accessing social media, joining Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia.

The Senate leader demanded a thorough investigation into the ADZU school shooting and ordered the Department of Education and the local government of Zamboanga to provide immediate psychosocial support to distressed learners and school personnel affected by the incident.

“We need clear answers on how the shooter was able to obtain two firearms and how these firearms were brought into the school premises,” he said.