Sweden recommends 15 minimum age for social media use

Sweden’s push for a 15-year minimum age on social media has exposed the policy’s hardest problem: not whether children should be kept off certain platforms, but how the state would verify ages without turning every app into a privacy checkpoint. The government-appointed commission recommended the limit in Stockholm, with Social Affairs and Public Health Minister Jakob Forssmed and investigator Lisa Englund Krafft arguing that the case for an age limit outweighed the benefits of free access.

The proposal would put platform companies at the center of enforcement, making them responsible for age verification. That shift matters because it moves the burden away from parents alone and onto the firms that design, distribute and profit from the services. It also raises the most sensitive questions in the debate: what counts as a social media platform, what evidence of age should satisfy regulators, and whether stricter checks would protect children or simply push them toward less visible corners of the internet.

Forssmed has cast youth social media use as a public health problem and said Sweden is “losing an entire generation to endless scrolling.” The commission’s recommendation would raise Sweden’s current threshold by two years. Under present rules, children need parental consent to create social-media accounts at 13, a line that already treats teen access as a matter for oversight rather than free entry.

The recommendation arrives after Sweden opened a formal inquiry on October 10, 2025 into whether a hard age limit should be introduced to strengthen children’s health and safety in digital environments. The inquiry, listed in the Riksdag as S 2025:11, is due to report by June 12, 2026. Sweden’s Public Health Agency had already moved first, issuing non-binding guidance in September 2024 that told children under 13 to avoid algorithm-driven platforms and apps, while advising that children under two should not use any screens at all.

Sweden is not acting alone. Norway said on April 24, 2026 that it plans to bring forward a bill by year-end to set a 16-year social media age limit and make technology companies responsible for age verification. At the European level, the European Commission has already published guidance on protecting minors online and a prototype age-verification app, showing how quickly this debate has moved from theory to implementation.

Australia set the pace when its under-16 restrictions took effect on December 10, 2025, covering major platforms including TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit and YouTube. Sweden’s recommendation now adds another test case for Europe: whether age gates can reduce harm in practice, or whether they mostly shift risk, and responsibility, somewhere else.