Under-16s in Indonesia are set to be restricted from using the social media platforms from today, under new government rules, after officials designated it high-risk.
Indonesia’s social media curbs, which the government says are intended to reduce the risk of cyberbullying and addiction, follow a ban in Australia last year over concerns about social media’s potential harms to young people’s mental health.
In the US, where social media companies face thousands of lawsuits over their platform designs, a court on Thursday found Meta and Alphabet’s YouTube created addictive products that caused harm to young people.
Indonesia has also designated platforms including X, Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, as high-risk.
Meanwhile, neither parents nor children have much idea what will happen – whether all under-16 users will find their accounts automatically deactivated, or whether there will be a new verification process.
“The policy is all concepts, but the technical guidance is still lacking,” said Ika Idris, a social media expert at Monash University who has children, aged 11 and 16, who use Roblox.
Meutya Hafid, Indonesia’s communications and digital minister, said this month the deactivation of current accounts of under-16s would take place gradually from today.
Late yesterday, Meutya told reporters X and TikTok would start deactivating accounts from today, and Roblox would allow users under-13s only to play offline.
She did not say whether these platforms were no longer considered high-risk and gave no details of the deactivation.
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