The minority Labour government, led by PM Jonas Gahr Støre, announced the legislation on Friday. The age threshold has been raised from the 15-year limit proposed in the 2025 consultation, aligning Norway with Australia’s world-first ban that came into force in December. Ireland is also considering similar legislation.
Norway’s minority Labour government announced on Friday that it will introduce legislation to prohibit children under the age of 16 from using social media, and will place responsibility for age verification on the technology companies operating those platforms.
Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre framed the proposal in terms of reclaiming childhood from algorithmic influence. “We are introducing this legislation because we want a childhood where children get to be children,” he said.
“Play, friendships, and everyday life must not be taken over by algorithms and screens. This is an important measure to safeguard children’s digital lives.”
The bill will be introduced to parliament by the end of 2026.
The announcement marks a significant escalation from the government’s own prior legislative position. When Norway submitted its social media age limit bill for public consultation in June 2025, the proposed threshold was 15, not 16.
That consultation drew more than 8,000 submissions, reflecting what Digitalisation Minister Karianne Tung described at the time as a high level of public engagement. The government has now reviewed that feedback and has moved the age threshold up by one year, aligning Norway with Australia rather than with the EU’s GDPR minimum age of 13 for data processing consent.
The shift from 15 to 16 is not a minor administrative adjustment; it reflects a political judgment that the evidence from the consultation, and from Australia’s early enforcement data, supports a stricter standard.
The comparison with Australia is central to the Norwegian government’s framing. Australia’s social media ban for under-16s, the first of its kind in the world, came into force in December 2025.
By February 2026, Australian authorities reported that more than 4.7 million accounts belonging to under-16 users had been deactivated or removed since the restrictions began. That enforcement record, however imperfect, has provided the first real-world data point on whether a legislative ban can produce measurable platform compliance.
Norway is watching closely. Digitalisation Minister Tung had previously told MLex that age verification “needs Europe to work in step,” noting that any effective system would require coordination across borders to prevent circumvention via VPN or cross-border access.
The mechanism of the ban is as important as the age threshold. Under the proposed Norwegian legislation, social media companies, defined as platforms where users can create a profile, connect with other profiles, and share content without editorial oversight, will be required to implement effective age verification.
The burden of verifying age shifts from the child, who currently self-reports, to the platform. Norway’s existing digital identity infrastructure, BankID, is expected to play a role in the verification architecture. Platforms that fail to comply will face fines. The consultation draft proposed fines of up to NOK 20 million.
The government also proposed raising the GDPR consent age for processing children’s data from 13 to 15 years old, a change each EU member state can make unilaterally under GDPR’s Article 8 provisions.
Several categories are expected to be exempted from the ban, including computer games, e-commerce platforms, and closed groups used for educational or sports coordination purposes.
The Norwegian app Spond, widely used by sports clubs to coordinate activities, was cited by Tung as an example of the kind of closed, purpose-specific platform that would not fall within the law’s scope.
The exemption question is, in practice, one of the most technically and politically contested aspects of any social media age ban: the line between a “social media platform” and a messaging service, gaming community, or sports coordination tool is blurrier than the headline prohibition suggests.
Norway is not acting in isolation. Ireland has also indicated it is considering following Australia’s lead. France introduced age verification requirements for social media in 2023.
The UK’s Online Safety Act, which came into force in stages through 2024 and 2025, imposes strict duties on platforms to prevent children from accessing harmful content, though it stops short of an outright age ban.
The European Commission, through the Digital Services Act, requires platforms to assess and mitigate systemic risks to minors, but has not mandated an age floor.
Norway, as a non-EU member but EEA participant, is choosing to go further than the DSA framework requires, a pattern that reflects both domestic political pressure and a broader Nordic willingness to regulate platform behaviour more assertively than Brussels.
Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
