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This article is part of our Opinions section, where we invite industry professionals to share their views on the most pressing technology questions of our time.
Denmark and Australia recently made headlines for announcing plans to keep children under 15 off social media. Parents of 13- and 14-year-olds can apply for exemptions, but will require official approval. It’s a blunt instrument to wield, and it tells you something important: after a decade of hoping platforms would regulate themselves, governments are finally losing patience.
I understand why: today, it’s alarmingly easy for anyone, including children, to stumble into the darker recesses of the internet, where identity theft, deepfakes, impersonation scams and disinformation are rampant. And by far the biggest threat is predatory behaviour on minors. The barrier is almost non-existent, and protecting yourself against it is difficult. With an imbalance like this, regulation stops being a political question and becomes a practical one.
That said, I fully support the ban. In a world where education and digital literacy haven’t caught up yet, it may be the only immediate form of protection we have. But bans alone won’t solve the problem. They draw a line without teaching anyone how to live safely on the right side of it. Education and literacy will get us there, just not overnight. That’s where the real work needs to begin.
We often fixate on a simple question: Should a 12-year-old have a social media account?
I think it’s the wrong question.
A better question is whether that child understands what they’re looking at. Can they recognise manipulation, fake content, and know when they’re being pressured? Many can’t, and it’s not their fault. They’re growing up in an environment designed to influence even highly literate adults, amplified by peer pressure, social status, and dynamics that once played out in classrooms or on the street, but now unfold almost entirely online.
This is why I support bans, while also being clear that more needs to be done. They’re useful traffic signals, if you will, but they don’t solve anything. You don’t let a six-year-old watch a horror film, but online, the equivalent content is a click away.
Children don’t need isolation. What they need is a digital environment where expectations are explained, dangerous patterns are slowed down, and adults – whether they are parents or product teams – acknowledge that most online experiences were never built with kids in mind. Competence grows when the environment supports it.
I spent several years living in Australia, and now I’m raising a family in Europe. It gives you perspective. Australia has long taken a more direct, practical approach to online safety – setting age limits and pairing them with digital literacy, parental tools and clearer expectations for platforms.
Europe is catching up, often with more legal layers, but the underlying goal is the same: to make the digital environment understandable and safe, not intimidating. It tries to develop a broader system with clear rules, practical tools and education of users.
Comparing the two, what struck me was this: regulation only works when it’s understandable, practical and usable in real life. If families, schools, companies and platforms can’t translate a rule into everyday behaviour, the rule stays in the PDF where it was written.
Whoever can turn complexity into something people can use, that’s who succeeds. It applies to governments, brands, and product teams alike.
Social media exposes kids to content and opinions, often reinforced by role models they follow. AI goes further and engages them in hyper-personal conversation, which is a significant shift. AI doesn’t just show information; it responds, remembers and adapts. It can simulate empathy in a way that feels authentic, especially for someone who is lonely, anxious or unsure of themselves. Because most AI systems don’t truly know who is on the other side, a minor and an adult are treated the same unless someone intentionally designs it otherwise.
This is why regulation has to extend beyond feeds. It has to consider how AI systems interact with vulnerable users, to draw a line between engagement and manipulation, and to make companies responsible for the environments they create.
AI isn’t dangerous because it’s intelligent, but because it’s persuasive and believable.
It might be tempting for companies to think this is simply a matter of following whatever regulation comes next. But that framing is misleading. Rules will keep changing – thresholds, definitions and interpretations will evolve. What won’t change is the expectation that companies understand how their systems behave once they leave the lab and enter real life.
The truth is that if your digital product is online, children will inevitably use it, whether intentionally or not. Even tools built for adults end up in the hands of younger users. We’ve seen this with YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and every other platform before them.
So the real question isn’t just compliance. It’s whether you’re comfortable (morally and commercially) with how your system behaves if a 13-year-old interacts with it. And if the answer is “not really”, it’s usually not an accident. Commercial incentives tend to reward scale and engagement, not restraint. That’s exactly why regulation plays a role: to counterbalance forces that the market rarely corrects on its own.
And this doesn’t stop at consumer apps. AI systems increasingly shape how organisations communicate, decide and influence people. Vulnerability isn’t only about age; it appears wherever there’s pressure, asymmetry or lack of context. When design is opaque, the risk extends well beyond children and back to the business itself.
Countries that have made meaningful progress share one common idea: age limits matter, but they’re only the entry point. What moves the needle is design and competence.
That means we need systems that reduce addictive loops for minors. It requires clear responses when someone expresses distress, and defaults that favour safety over engagement. Most importantly, we should give parents, teachers and users tools that they can actually understand.
For companies, the same principle applies: don’t wait for perfect regulation. Treat safety as part of your product strategy. Invest in literacy, oversight, and transparent design. The payoff is trust, which is becoming a competitive advantage in a world where everything is mediated through algorithms.
Australia’s decision is a wake-up call, not a cure. Even if every ban works perfectly on paper, children will still find screens, still see content, and still interact with AI.
The question is whether they’ll do it inside systems designed with their limitations in mind or inside systems that pretend they don’t exist.
As someone who works with digital products and has lived through different regulatory cultures, I’ve learned that competence is the real protection. Regulation helps. Design helps. Tools help. But without understanding, nothing else scales.
If we take that seriously, we can create online spaces where children don’t just survive, but thrive. We can build AI systems that don’t just comply with the rules of today, but earn the trust we’ll need tomorrow.
