Proposal to ban children under 16 years old from commenting and sharing on social networks

At a conference to collect comments on the draft, on the afternoon of July 23, Ms. Nguyen Thi Thanh Huyen, Deputy Director of Radio, Television and Electronic Information, Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, said that new regulations were added for stricter management, to protect children in the online environment.

According to Ms. Huyen, children under 16 years old are not allowed to register their own social network accounts. Registration must be done by a parent or guardian. Parents or guardians will monitor children’s social media usage, content and duration.

The draft proposes that children’s accounts should not post, comment, interact or express emotions on social networks. This means, “children’s accounts under the supervision of parents and guardians can only view content, not post, interact, comment, or share,” Ms. Huyen said.

Additionally, children’s accounts must default to the highest level of privacy protection. Platforms and social networks must proactively block content that is harmful or can affect children.

Social networks must implement a system that automatically determines the age of users to distribute appropriate content. The new draft regulations require platforms to coordinate with authorities, establish a reporting mechanism, and provide urgent information when detecting acts of child abuse in the online environment.

Commenting on the new regulations, Ms. Nguyen Thu Thao, Director of Public Policy in charge of the Vietnamese market of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and Threads, said that users under 16 years old should not be completely banned from using interactive features.

According to her, platforms identify accounts that are likely to be children based on a number of user behavior and activity characteristics, including the use of AI models to estimate age and proactive detection systems.

“If children are only allowed to use social networks passively, the platforms will no longer have the behavioral signals necessary to identify users as children,” said a Meta representative, adding that this could reduce the effectiveness of measures to detect and protect children.

According to Ms. Thao, the new regulations may cause many children to declare their age incorrectly to continue using interactive features. At that time, they can use a regular account and are no longer subject to age-based protection mechanisms. The new regulations also limit the decision-making power of parents and guardians in evaluating whether and how their children can use social networks.

Meta representatives said that many countries prioritize protection measures according to level or appropriate for each age group instead of completely banning children from using interactive features. These measures often include high default privacy settings, content filtering, time limits, message restrictions, and providing tools for parents to monitor their children’s usage.

According to Meta representatives, this approach recognizes that children also benefit from using supervised online environments, with appropriate protections. “This method is much more effective than the ban,” Ms. Thao said.

The Department of Radio, Television and Electronic Information – the drafting agency said that the Decree aims to create a favorable legal environment to develop the cultural industry in Vietnam in a professional and healthy direction.

The Decree amends and supplements Decree 147/2024 to update regulations on decentralization, decentralization, reduction of administrative procedures and institutionalization of policies according to Directive 05 on strengthening information management in the online environment, protecting children and improving the effectiveness of state management in the context of digital transformation.