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New York University professor Jonathan Haidt’s 

, drew widespread attention. Australia’s first-of-its-kind social media ban for children under 16 

 are considering social media age restrictions.

I’ve given up some sleep to track policy action around the world, relying on desk research and collaboration with Internet Society colleagues in more than 30 countries and a global community of more than 110 active chapters across six continents.

Across the globe, social media bans, or delays, 

 with parents and politicians. They see children (and adults) tied to their phones and computers. Nearly 

 something needs to be done to improve children’s online safety.

The concern is real. The attention and headlines are global. But a closer look at policy trends tells another story about the direction of social media age restrictions.

While we can’t dismiss the attention social media bans have received, the trend is much more nuanced than a proliferation of “Australia-style” bans:

A closer look at policy developments shows a global preference for safety-by-design requirements over full bans.

Technical limitations, legal restrictions, and social values are influencing decisions to reject complete bans in favor of safety design and education.

Not every country is pursuing social media age restrictions for online safety, or at least not just online safety. While subjective and a minority of cases, politics and national security concerns are also driving action.

More than 60 countries are formally exploring restrictions, but only seven countries have actually implemented bans to date.

Of those few countries, the minimum age, covered services, and age verification requirements all vary. Research on effectiveness is limited, but there are now initial findings from government and academic studies in the 

While nearly one-third of the world’s countries are formally considering or taking action on social media age bans, fewer than a dozen have passed or implemented national social media age restrictions — Australia, Brazil, China, Egypt, Gabon, Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and Vietnam.

In countries with active legislation, proposals often lack support from a political majority or the ruling party. The recently introduced 

, with an under-13 ban and under-15 restrictions, would preempt proposals and draft legislation across the 27 countries in the EU.

Why have so few countries taken action despite widespread calls for social media bans, including 

Of course, regulation can take a long time. Powerful companies are also pushing back on these rules. Those are important factors, but there’s more to it.

In fact, a growing number of countries have ruled out or oppose a full ban, including 

 also offer prominent alternatives to bans that focus on accountability for safe design.

Technical, legal, and social constraints on bans

Policymakers considering bans must recognize three types of implementation challenges: technical feasibility, legal requirements, and broader societal values.

. That’s difficult when teens generally find it 

. Policymakers must decide whether to prioritize stricter age checks or focus on measures that make online services safer for children and all users.

In Australia, more than 80% of children and teens under 16 continued to use social media accounts in the first few months after the ban went into effect, according to 

social media ban requiring government ID checks

 was quietly postponed from June 2026 to January 2027 after companies declined to comply. Social media companies 

 about processing IDs, arguing the current requirements are unworkable.

While there is a lot of discussion about VPNs, government reports found only 

 reported using VPNs to circumvent age restrictions. While these figures are self-reported and the actual percentages may be higher, the research finds that children don't have to use VPNs because there are easier ways to get around age restrictions.

 when social media restrictions go into effect. This likely means adults are more likely to use technical tools to circumvent age verification requirements than children and teens. Research and media reports find young people 

 or use other simple methods to avoid detection.

Security breaches and privacy violations are not theoretical. Multiple high-profile incidents occurred in the past year.

 and other sensitive personal information were exposed when a third-party customer service provider for the social media company Discord was breached in October 2025. The incident happened shortly after age verification requirements went into effect under the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act.

broke ties with the age and identification provider Persona

 earlier this year after reports that the company accidentally left some of its code and capabilities publicly exposed. The decision came just ahead of Discord’s

While the EU age assurance system is open source, making it easier to identify and address vulnerabilities, a security researcher 

 within a few hours of the code going live.

Legal restrictions include jurisdictional, children’s rights, freedom of expression, and privacy protections that limit complete bans and strict age verification.

 are challenging the under-16 social media ban in separate legal cases. The lawsuits raise concerns about access to political communication and privacy risks, which they argue could be more narrowly and effectively addressed by focusing on safety by design. The challenges call attention to a disproportionate impact on vulnerable and rural communities, including those with disabilities and indigenous young people.

 due to freedom of expression and privacy concerns. The European Commission previously 

warned the legislation would breach European law

. There are also many First Amendment free expression 

legal challenges against social media bans passed in US states

Government consultations have been nearly unanimous in calling for safer design and accountability over blanket bans. They also frequently emphasize that efforts to protect children must not restrict their rights to free expression and access to information.

 reported that none of the experts it consulted recommended a social media ban for children under 16.

Legislation to ban children under 15 from using social media was 

 following consultations that raised concerns about freedom of expression.

 following public consultations and engagement with researchers, including 

 author Jonathan Haidt and Meta whistleblower Arturo Bejar.

initially pursued a ban on social media access

, allowing access for under-16s where companies can demonstrate that their services are safe.

, the European Commission rejected an outright ban. The 

 a developmental approach with an under-13 ban, parent-controlled accounts for 13- and 14-year-olds, and safety design requirements for teens under 18.

Why are governments pushing for age bans?

In a small but important minority of cases, countries make the case for social media age restrictions to address national security concerns, such as 

Social media bans have become a popular political message for heads of state and ministers, particularly in Europe, where such measures poll well and many politicians face elections next spring. They are often seen as 

politically attractive with broad public support, and tap into frustrations with Big Tech

, progress has often been limited, with efforts running into legal challenges and ongoing questions about the effectiveness of blanket bans.

Social media bans are easy to explain and politically attractive. Implementing them, however, has proven far more difficult and controversial. Policymakers face legal hurdles, technical limitations, and concerns about fundamental rights to free expression and access to information.

Focusing on restrictions leads to more intrusive age verification with new security, privacy, and access issues for children and adults. Encouragingly, global policy trends show a more direct focus on requiring 

Instead of asking how to police age restrictions, governments must focus on accountability and incentives for safer online services.

I want to thank and acknowledge Tech Policy Press for making its 

Global Social Media Age Restriction Tracker

 publicly accessible. The Internet Society is now helping with the tracking.

Following multiple incidents over the past several months where AI agents operated by 

 intruded on third party systems, industry leaders including Anthropic’s 

 of AI development. But the Trump administration has rejected calls for a slowdown.

“We’re leading China in AI, we’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI, wins,” President Donald Trump 

 last month. “And we can put guardrails, we can do this and that. But I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up.”

In five national polls in 2026, the share of American adults saying AI is moving too fast or should slow down ranged from 55% to 77%. Each poll worded the question differently, as shown below. In the polls that broke out results by party, Democrats were more concerned about AI than Republicans. But in three of the four polls that asked by party, a majority of Republicans also said AI was moving too fast.

 that Democrats have “seized on” the Trump administration’s resistance to AI regulation “as a line of attack” in the US midterm elections. 

Finland President Alexander Stubb and Norway Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre in Rovaniemi on September 13, 2026. Photo: Katja Säilä / Finnish Government

Last month, leaders from a mostly European coalition of more than 30 countries signed a 

 led by the president of Finland and the prime minister of Norway for stronger controls on frontier AI. The document advocates for mandatory pre-deployment testing and independent evaluation, common standards, incident reporting, access to scientific expertise and trusted evaluation. It also proposes exploring a new international institution that could set standards, enable verification and convene states when capability thresholds are crossed. The first part is essential; the second deserves more thought.

Today, too few institutions have the technical capacity to independently understand, test and challenge frontier AI. At the same time, a small number of companies control much of the compute, capital, expertise and access to the most advanced systems. Governments therefore risk becoming dependent on the companies they are trying to regulate for the evidence needed to regulate them.

The answer should be to build capability from the bottom up.

The Internet provides an important lesson because its global reach was built alongside a system of distributed governance. The Internet did not develop around a single institution with authority over the entire network. Different organizations took responsibility for different functions and were connected through common standards, protocols and coordination mechanisms. The 

 (IETF) developed the technical standards that allow different networks and systems to interoperate. The 

 coordinate Internet number resources within their regions. The 

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

 (ICANN) coordinates critical identifiers while working with the technical community and the regional registries. None of these organizations runs the Internet. Their roles are narrower, and their effectiveness comes partly from the fact that they operate within a wider system of distributed technical responsibility.

This architecture was not designed once and imposed from above; it evolved as the network evolved. Problems created new institutions, practices and coordination mechanisms; existing institutions adapted; and technical expertise remained distributed. That did not eliminate politics or conflict. It did, however, prevent the governance of a global network from becoming dependent on a single center of authority or expertise.

The experience of Internet security makes the lesson even clearer. After the 

 disrupted large parts of the Internet, the initial response was fragmented and uncoordinated. The 

 was established, but it did not become a global cybersecurity authority. Instead, incident-response teams proliferated around different networks, sectors and countries. The 

 of the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams, or FIRST, in 1990 provided a mechanism for those teams to exchange information and coordinate across borders. The model was simple: build technical capability close to where problems occur, then connect that capability.

That approach became particularly important because one network’s security problem is every network’s security problem. A vulnerability discovered in one network can affect thousands of others. The solution was not to put every incident under one institution but to ensure that more institutions could identify, investigate and respond to problems while having mechanisms to share what they learned. FIRST today brings together government, commercial and academic incident-response teams around precisely that principle.

The lesson for AI is not to recreate the IETF, ICANN or CERTs. AI is a very different technology and has a far more concentrated architecture. The lesson is institutional: when a global system is too complex and distributed to be governed effectively from one center, build capability where it is needed and connect it through common processes.

AI currently has almost the opposite problem. Its technical infrastructure is highly concentrated, while its independent governance capacity is still thin. This is where the emerging network of AI safety, security and evaluation institutes matters as these institutes can provide the capacity governments increasingly need: testing models, evaluating risks, investigating incidents, developing benchmarks and challenging industry claims. International cooperation can then make their work comparable and useful beyond their own borders.

Not every country will need a frontier-model laboratory. But a country should be able to develop expertise relevant to how AI will actually be used within its own context. A researcher in Nairobi may identify risks involving language or public-sector applications that an evaluator in Silicon Valley misses. An institution in New Delhi may understand deployment conditions that are invisible to a European laboratory. A national or regional evaluation center can assess not only whether a system is safe in the abstract, but whether it is appropriate for the institutions, populations and infrastructure in which it will operate.

This also speaks to the claims over digital sovereignty. In today’s technological environment, digital sovereignty should not be all about technological self-sufficiency or building every component domestically. It should also be about having the capacity to determine how AI is used within a country’s own legal, economic and social context; to understand its potential benefits and harms; and to make informed decisions about the risks it is prepared to accept.

That requires expertise. A government cannot meaningfully determine how AI should be used if it has to rely entirely on the companies developing it, or on assessments produced somewhere else. The answer is therefore not to centralize expertise but to distribute it and make it interoperable. An evaluation conducted in London should be comparable with one conducted in Nairobi. A benchmark developed in Singapore should be reproducible elsewhere. A vulnerability discovered in one country should not remain there. Methods, evidence, incident reports and lessons should move across borders.

This requires common standards for evaluation, security, data handling and reporting; trusted mechanisms for sharing sensitive information; accreditation so that institutions can demonstrate the technical and security capacity to handle frontier systems; and pathways to controlled model access. This is where a multistakeholder approach can add value to AI governance, by connecting the different capabilities required to test, understand and govern these systems.

Governments can set rules and accountability requirements; companies can provide access and technical information; researchers and independent institutes can test and challenge systems; and civil society can bring perspectives on rights, harms and real-world impacts. The objective is not to give every actor an equal seat at the table, but to ensure that no single actor controls the knowledge needed to govern AI.

The emerging network of AI safety and evaluation institutes is therefore an important part of this architecture. It provides something that another global authority cannot provide on its own: independent technical capacity on the ground. Governments still have a central role in establishing obligations for testing, evaluation, verification, reporting and early warning, as well as setting requirements for access, security and accountability. They should also invest in national and regional expertise. But they do not need to own all of that expertise. International institutions can establish common expectations and facilitate political coordination, while independent institutes provide the technical capacity to determine whether those expectations are being met. The goal should be a system in which expertise is distributed, connected and capable of challenging both governments and companies when necessary.

The priority should be to strengthen the network that can make those rules work: institutes that can independently scrutinize AI, wherever they are needed, and mechanisms that allow what they learn to be shared elsewhere.

The Internet did not become governable because someone eventually found the right institution to put in charge of it. It became governable because technical responsibility was distributed and the people exercising it learned how to coordinate. AI governance should learn the same lesson.

Paul Ash is chief executive of the Christchurch Call Foundation.

In moments of uncertainty, multistakeholder approaches to tackling difficult problems can seem quite demanding. They are certainly not easy.

Governments, tech companies, civil society organizations, researchers, and affected communities bring together people with different incentives, worldviews, and priorities. Conversations can be uncomfortable, and agreement can be elusive.

And yet, at a time of profound technological change and rising geopolitical tension, it is precisely these kinds of spaces that we need most.

Over the past few years, I have watched with growing concern as many of the institutions and forums that helped shape the internet's trust and safety architecture have become increasingly strained. Some have struggled to sustain participation or navigate polarized political environments. And at the same time, focus and resources have shifted toward emerging priorities, particularly around artificial intelligence.

In some respects, that is understandable. AI is capturing a significant share of the world's attention, and new forums are emerging to address the opportunities and risks it presents. Yet the result is that there are fewer spaces today where governments, companies, researchers, and civil society can come together for the kind of sustained, deep engagement needed to tackle difficult issues over time. That should concern all of us.

As we build new forums to address the challenges posed by emerging technologies, we should be careful not to neglect the collaborative infrastructure that already exists.

Not all the challenges we associate with AI are new. Safety, accountability, transparency, governance, resilience, and public trust have long been a part of trust and safety work. What has changed is the speed, scale, and complexity of the environment in which those conversations are taking place.

One thing I've learned from this work is that progress tends to happen when different perspectives are brought together. Our challenges are simply too complex for any one group to tackle alone. These conversations involve competing priorities, legitimate disagreements, and complex trade-offs between safety, innovation, rights, and security. Multistakeholder processes create space for people with different perspectives to work through disagreement constructively, and to co-develop innovative solutions.

We need places where those conversations can happen consistently and in good faith. We need spaces where assumptions can be challenged respectfully and where diverse perspectives and expertise can contribute to better outcomes. Online harms don't stop at the edge of an organization's remit or a country's borders. Addressing them requires the willingness to work across those lines.

That is one of the enduring lessons of the Christchurch Call.

Since its inception, the Call has brought together governments, tech companies, and civil society organizations around a shared objective: preventing terrorists and violent extremists from exploiting online platforms. Participants have not always agreed. However, sustained engagement has helped us build relationships and advance practical initiatives.

One of the clearest examples of this multistakeholder approach in action is the 

 (CRP), developed jointly by members of the Call Community. The CRP enables a rapid and coordinated response to real-world terrorist attacks with an online component. By tackling the spread of terrorist and violent extremist content online when incidents occur, this protocol is intended to deny terrorists and violent extremists the ability to use the internet to expand their harmful impact.

The commitment to practical action also shapes our emerging work on AI. For example, it is reflected in the development of our AI safety benchmark, which assesses how AI systems respond to potentially harmful interactions in multi-turn conversations, using OSINT-grounded scenarios and evaluation criteria designed by experts. We’re looking forward to sharing the benchmark publicly in a few weeks’ time.

This need for collective action feels particularly important today. AI gives us yet another compelling reason to invest in the institutions and relationships that make effective governance possible. New technologies may require new thinking, but in many cases, we should draw on the expertise in existing groups to build on the collaboration that has underpinned progress in trust and safety for years.

 remains committed to that work and values working with organizations and individuals who share the Call’s principles, objectives and commitment to collective action. The strength of the Call comes from the diversity of voices around the table.

The challenges facing the digital environment are unlikely to become simpler in the years ahead. Our experience over the past seven years has shown what can be achieved when governments, industry, and civil society stay engaged, even when consensus is difficult, and as technologies evolve. At a time when technological change is accelerating and geopolitical tensions are reshaping the global landscape, opportunities for deep engagement matter more than ever. Our future will depend not only on the technologies we build, but on our ability to build understanding, trust, and practical solutions together.

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