Norway's government confirmed on Monday that it is putting the finishing touches on legislation that would bar children under 16 from using social media, with the bill expected to reach parliament before the end of the year. The measure would extend well beyond conventional platforms, reaching into online gaming and messaging services that officials say pose similar risks to young users.
A Threshold That Keeps Shifting
The policy has evolved since Norway's centre-left Labour government first floated the idea. An initial draft bill published in 2025 proposed setting the minimum age at 15. That figure was revised upward to 16 in April, following consultation with the public and with regulators across the European Economic Area. The adjustment reflects a broader pattern across Europe, where lawmakers have struggled to settle on a single defensible age for digital adulthood, caught between child-development research, industry pressure, and the practical difficulty of enforcement.
"Children's safety must come first," said Lene Vågslid, Norway's minister for children and families, who described the legislation as nearly finished. Her ministry has framed the restrictions around four specific harms: exposure to damaging content, manipulative design features that encourage compulsive use, illegal advertising aimed at minors, and unsolicited contact from strangers.
Beyond Social Media: Games and Messaging in Scope
What distinguishes Norway's approach from earlier European efforts is its refusal to carve out blanket exemptions for gaming and messaging platforms. Officials initially signalled that such services would largely be spared, but the government has since opted for a risk-based assessment instead. Under this model, a platform's obligations depend on what it actually does and how it is used, not on how it is categorised.
That shift has direct consequences for some of the most widely used digital products among young people. TikTok and Snapchat, both built around open social interaction and algorithmic content feeds, would likely fall within the law's reach. So would Roblox, the gaming platform where millions of young users build, play, and chat with others in real time - a combination of features that regulators increasingly view as functionally equivalent to social media, regardless of how the platform describes itself.
Conversely, the risk-based standard means that tools considered low-risk - a school messaging app, for instance - could remain available to children even under the new rules. This distinction matters: it suggests Norway is trying to target specific mechanisms of harm rather than imposing a uniform ban on all forms of digital communication.
Verification, Privacy, and the Participation Question
Enforcement will depend heavily on age verification, and the burden for building and maintaining those systems would fall on technology companies themselves. Any such system must comply with European data protection rules, which places real constraints on how firms can confirm a user's age without collecting excessive personal information. This is the technical crux of nearly every age-restriction law proposed in Europe: verifying age reliably typically requires identity documents, biometric estimation, or third-party checks, each of which carries its own privacy trade-offs and potential for data misuse.
Vågslid also said the government intends to protect children's "right to participate" online, though the Monday announcement offered no detail on how that commitment would be reconciled with an outright usage ban for under-16s. That gap is likely to draw scrutiny as the bill moves toward parliament, particularly from digital rights advocates who argue that participation and restriction are not easily compatible without carefully designed exceptions.
What Comes Next
With consultation already completed in Norway and across the EEA, the legislation now heads toward formal submission. Its final shape - including exactly which platforms are captured and how age verification will function in practice - will become clearer once the bill reaches lawmakers. Norway's approach is likely to be watched closely elsewhere in Europe, where governments are weighing similar restrictions but have yet to settle on a workable, privacy-respecting method of enforcement.
