JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia plans to issue a regulation to set a minimum age for users of social media, a move aimed at protecting children, its communications minister has said.
The plans follows Australia’s decision to ban children under 16 from accessing social media, with fines for tech giants from Instagram and Facebook owner Meta to TikTok if they failed to prevent children accessing their platforms.
Minister Meutya Hafid did not say what the minimum age would be in Indonesia. Her remarks, made late on Monday, came after Meutya discussed the plan with President Prabowo Subianto.
“We discussed how to protect children in digital space,” she said in a video uploaded on the YouTube channel of the president’s office.
“The president said to carry on with this plan. He is very supportive on how this kind of child protection will be done in our digital space,” she said.
Internet penetration in Indonesia, a country of about 280 million people, reached 79.5% last year, according to a survey of 8,700 people by the Indonesia internet service providers’ association.
The survey showed 48% of children under 12 had access to the internet, with some respondents of that age group using Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. The survey showed internet penetration was 87% among “Gen Z” users, or those age 12 to 27.
(Reporting by Ananda Teresia and Fransiska Nangoy; Editing by Martin Petty)
