The news: Spain Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced plans for the country to introduce an Australia-inspired ban on social media for children younger than 16, per CNBC. 

Sánchez said under-16s will be blocked from social media starting next week under five new government measures targeting platforms, though Spain hasn’t pointed out which platforms would be directly affected. 

• Social platforms must use real age-verification tools to enforce the under-16 ban, not simple checkboxes, Sánchez said, placing the onus on platform owners to enact age restrictions.
• Beyond fines, Spain is focusing on measures to enforce legal accountability for executives who fail to remove unregulated or hateful content.
• The rules will turn “algorithmic manipulation and the amplification of illegal content” into a new criminal offense.

“Social media has become a failed state, a place where laws are ignored and crime is endured, where disinformation is worth more than truth, and half of users suffer hate speech,” Sánchez said Tuesday at the World Government Summit in Dubai.

Zooming out: The latest age-gating initiative is the first for the EU and could set the precedent for stronger regulations. But unlike Australia, which is mostly insulated, the EU’s regional nature makes it difficult for social media companies to manage regulations.

• France’s National Assembly approved a bill to restrict social media for under-16s; it now moves to the Senate
• The UK’s House of Lords backed a similar measure; it heads to the House of Commons.

If enacted, these steps would add momentum to under-16 restrictions across Europe, increasing the likelihood that age limits become standard policy rather than isolated efforts. Some platforms are already bracing for impact.

Implications for brands: Europe’s youth audience is unlikely to vanish overnight—or at least fragment behind age gates. If the ban spreads from Spain to France and the UK, brands lose frictionless access to one of social media’s most formative cohorts.

Brands heavily reliant on EU social platforms for advertising should diversify youth strategy, build compliant first-party data with cohorts age 18 and older, pressure-test creative against EU standards, and model scenarios where youth reach slowly diminishes.

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