UAE sets 15 as minimum age for social media accounts
The UAE became the first Arab country to set 15 as the minimum age for social media accounts, raising the harder question of age checks.
The United Arab Emirates has drawn a hard line at 15 for social media accounts, but the policy’s force will depend on whether platforms can verify age without turning everyday access into a privacy checkpoint. The UAE Cabinet approved the rule on June 18, making the country the first Arab state to impose a minimum social-media age and putting child safety, surveillance and technical feasibility on the same collision course.
Children under 15 will be barred from creating, using or operating personal social media accounts on platforms in the UAE. That means they will not be able to post, comment, share content or join public groups. Teenagers aged 15 and 16 will still be allowed online, but only with stronger protections in place, including age-appropriate content controls, limits on contact with unknown users, screen-time tools and parental supervision features.
The government said self-declared ages will not count as valid verification. Platforms will have to use robust checks, including digital identity verification and AI-supported systems, and they will be required to disable accounts belonging to children under 15, block attempts to bypass verification and prevent the use of children’s data for targeted ads or behavioral profiling. Social-media companies have up to 12 months to comply.
The resolution sits inside a wider child-digital-safety framework already taking shape in the country. Federal Decree-Law No. 26 of 2025 on Child Digital Safety entered into force on January 1, 2026, with full enforceability expected in January 2027 after a one-year grace period. That law created a broader legal shield against online risks, harmful content, privacy breaches and digital exploitation, and the new age rule narrows that framework into a concrete standard for access.
Officials have spent months building the case for tighter controls. In September 2025, the UAE, the Arab League and UNICEF launched the second phase of the Safe Internet for Our Children campaign, warning that social media can shape children’s behavior and worldview while exposing them to extremist ideas, exploitation, cyberbullying, fraud, screen addiction and harmful content. The government has framed the resolution as part of an “advanced model” for child protection in the digital space.
The UAE move lands in a broader international push. Australia and several European countries have moved to tighten restrictions on minors’ use of social media, while UNICEF welcomed the G7 digital ministers’ June 1, 2026 agreement on common principles for child online safety. That leaves the same unresolved question confronting regulators from Abu Dhabi to Brussels: whether platforms can protect children at scale without making age verification itself a new form of digital gatekeeping.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
