Narayan AmmachchiAustralia’s push to keep children off social media is rapidly echoing across Latin America. From Mexico to Chile and Brazil, governments are racing to introduce laws that would restrict minors’ access to platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.
While most proposals are still moving through legislatures, many are expected to become law over the coming months. Mexico, Chile and Uruguay are drafting legislation, while bills are awaiting final approval in Costa Rica, Brazil and Buenos Aires Province. In the Caribbean, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago have also begun exploring similar measures. Yet experts warn that passing legislation may prove to be the easier task. The real challenge is enforcing it.
“Bans alone don’t work. Three months after Australia’s took effect, 85% of under-16s were still active on social media, most just logging back into the same accounts,” says Arjun Sharda, a 14-year-old U.S. teen tech entrepreneur and founder of TLEEM, a K-12 networking nonprofit for young leaders, which serves thousands of students across multiple countries.
At the heart of the enforcement challenge is one simple question: how can governments accurately verify a user’s age?
Mexico, for example, does not have a universal digital identity platform that can be used by social media companies to verify users’ ages.
The challenge facing Mexico is similar to that confronting many other countries. Social media companies do not possess reliable data to determine a user’s age, while governments hold identity records that cannot simply be shared with private firms because of privacy and data protection concerns.
To bridge that gap, governments are increasingly requiring technology companies to adopt stronger age-assurance systems. Some platforms are already experimenting with third-party providers, which estimate a person’s age from a video selfie using AI.
However, relying on third-party verification creates a new set of risks, says Rohit Poduval, a Senior Software Engineer at Amazon.
Such “third parties” are very few, and they end up handling verification for most social media platforms, creating single points of failure for data breaches, he pointed out.
According to Poduval, there is currently no technology that can verify users’ ages while fully protecting their personal information.
Poduval is also a member of the Integrity Institute, where he co-authored responses to the Australian and UK governments on children’s online privacy and social media access.
Chile’s privacy-first approach
Chile is attempting to solve that dilemma through its national digital identity system. The government is preparing a proposal that would use digital identity and government services portal Clave Única to verify users’ ages without disclosing their identities to social media platforms.
“A ban without enforcement infrastructure creates false comfort for parents while kids migrate to riskier, less regulated platforms,” Poduval warned.
Sharda agrees that enforcement should go beyond simply blocking access. Instead, he argues, governments should regulate social media platforms to be less addictive for children while strengthening oversight in schools.
“Mexico should target design, not just access; Brazil’s new children’s law already bans infinite scroll for minors, which hits the real problem. Pair that with school-level enforcement, which is actually checkable”.
Brazil has already moved in that direction.
In March 2026, Brazil became the first country in Latin America to implement a nationwide law requiring stronger safeguards for minors on social media. Rather than imposing an outright ban, the legislation requires children under 16 to link their accounts to a legal guardian and prohibits platforms from using addictive features such as infinite scrolling and automatic video playback.
Like Australia, however, Brazil has placed much of the responsibility for verifying users’ ages on social media companies. Platforms that fail to comply can face fines of up to 50 million reais (about US$9.5 million).
Elsewhere in the region, governments are pursuing different models while pursuing the same objective.
In Buenos Aires Province, authorities have already banned smartphones in schools, while a separate bill introduced by Provincial Deputy Gustavo Cuervo would prohibit children under 13 from accessing social media.
Costa Rica is advancing one of Central America’s toughest proposals. In April 2026, the Legislative Commission on Youth, Childhood and Adolescence unanimously approved Bill No. 25,336, which would prohibit children under 14 from creating social media accounts or using social networking platforms.
Add comment