TikTok and YouTube have deactivated a total of around 4.7 million accounts belonging to Indonesian children since restrictions on social media for young people came into force in late March, the country’s communications and digital affairs minister said.
Speaking late last week, Meutya Hafid told reporters that TikTok had deactivated 4.1 million accounts since the ban was imposed, Reuters reported, while YouTube had deactivated some 600,000 accounts. She added that the ministry was currently verifying the self-assessment reports submitted by the two companies, but wanted other big tech companies to follow.
“We’re not just delaying a child’s access, but we also want platform behaviors to change,” Meutya said.
On March 28, Indonesia joined a growing group of countries that have blocked children under 16 from having accounts on “high-risk” digital platforms, including YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Bigo Live and Roblox.
Announcing the measure in March, Meutya Hafid said the restrictions were aimed at protecting children from online dangers.
“Our children face increasingly real threats. From exposure to pornography, cyberbullying, online fraud and, most importantly, addiction,” Hafid said. “The government is there so that parents no longer have to fight alone against the giant algorithms. »
As I noted previously, the Indonesian government has not been shy about its regulatory stance against large foreign technology companies. In recent years, it has introduced regulations requiring digital platforms to pay media outlets that provide them with content and has banned social media companies from facilitating the sale of products on their platforms. Its internet regulations also give the government the power to fine or block social media platforms that do not comply with official requests to remove banned content.
Indonesia’s move came shortly after Australia introduced the world’s first ban on social media for under-16s. The policy, which came into force in December, requires social media companies to block users under 16 from having accounts on their platforms, rather than penalizing young people or their parents.
The government says more than 5 million accounts under the age of 16 have been removed, deactivated or restricted since the ban took effect, but there is some evidence that its actual impact has been limited.
However, a recent study by researchers at Newcastle University showed that more than 80 percent of under-16s in Australia said they were still using social media three months after the legislation came into force. This, it said, was due to “limited implementation, incomplete compliance and substantial circumvention of social media restrictions”.
The Australian government announced this week that it would double the penalty for violating the ban to A$99 million, arguing that tech companies are “not doing enough” to keep children away from harmful social media sites, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announcing that “there are still too many children on social media.”
A long list of countries, including India, China, Turkey, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, the European Union and several European countries, have since followed suit by implementing certain types of restrictions.
As in other countries, major tech companies have expressed support for child protection, but, as a Meta spokesperson told the Jakarta Globe in March, “must be implemented carefully so as not to encourage adolescents to move to more dangerous, unsupervised sites, or to disconnected experiences that circumvent important protections.”