A Spanish government decision to ban children under the age of 16 from social media has drawn praise from parents but escalated a spat between X owner Elon Musk and prime minister Pedro Sánchez.
Musk described Sánchez as “a tyrant and traitor to the people of Spain” in a post on X above a clip of the Socialist announcing the ban during the World Governments Summit in Dubai.
In his speech, Sánchez warned that children “are exposed to a space they were never meant to navigate alone, a space of addiction, abuse, pornography, manipulation, violence.”
He added: “We will no longer accept that. We will protect them from the digital Wild West.”
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Sánchez said that social media companies will have to provide age verification systems on their platforms, “not just check boxes but real barriers that work.”
Spain will follow Australia and France in introducing an age-based prohibition. A Portuguese proposal whereby under-16s would only have access to social media with parental consent is currently in parliament.
The Spanish ban, Sánchez said, will be accompanied by other measures aimed at improving the digital environment. They include making social media executives more accountable for the content posted on their platforms and clamping down on the manipulation of algorithms.
In addition, Sánchez said prosecutors will investigate Instagram, Tiktok and X’s artificial intelligence tool Grok for possible infractions.
Under the plan, a new tool will also be created to trace how digital platforms “fuel division and amplify hate”.
In a later comment on Sánchez’s proposal, Musk posted: “Sánchez is the true fascist totalitarian”.
The two had clashed last week, when Musk appeared to criticise the Spanish government’s intended regularisation of around 500,000 migrants. Sánchez responded with a social media post that read: “Mars can wait. Humanity can’t.”
In his speech in Dubai, Sánchez referred to Musk, describing him as “a migrant himself”, and saying that he had spread disinformation about the Spanish regularisation process.
Details of the social media ban are expected next week, when the cabinet is due to approve the proposal before adding it to another bill going through parliament, as an amendment. Meanwhile, parents of schoolchildren have broadly welcomed it.
“We think [social media] has to be regulated,” said María Saturnina Jiménez, president of the confederation of parents’ associations in the Castilla y León region. “It’s important to set up mechanisms for the companies that control the platforms to avoid abuse or other damaging effects on younger people.”
The social media ban has received a lukewarm response from the opposition.
The conservative People’s Party said it had called for tighter, age-based controls in November. The far-right Vox said that the new measures aim “to ensure that nobody criticises [the government] on social media”.
