VIENNA, January 27. /TASS/. Austria plans to ban access to social media for children under the age of 14 by the time the next school year starts in the fall, Alexander Proll, secretary general of the country’s People’s Party, announced.

"Our goal is to ensure that concrete steps to implement [the ban] are taken before the start of the new school year. The first step, in my opinion, would be to form a group of experts and representatives of political parties. The second - and we are already addressing this issue behind the scenes - is the implementation of specific technical measures and details," he told the O1 radio station.

He said that the Austrian government will follow "the example of Australia, where responsibility for enforcing the ban was placed on the platforms themselves."

Meanwhile, the NEOS party, which is part of the ruling coalition, believes the move goes too far, proposing an alternative: verifying teenagers' social media accounts through Austria ID, an application that enables people to identify themselves securely online and thus use digital services and carry out transactions. However, technically, such a solution cannot be implemented earlier than 2027, Henrike Brandstotter, a member of the National Council (Austria's lower house of parliament) from the NEOS party, told the radio station.

On December 10, 2025, a law banning people under the age of 16 from using designated social media platforms came into effect in Australia. The ban covered Facebook, Instagram (banned in Russia, owned by Meta, a corporation recognized as extremist in Russia), Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, X, and YouTube. Under the new legislation, tech platforms face full liability for violations, with potential fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($32.9 million) if they fail to take all possible measures to deactivate minors' accounts.

On January 27, a bill banning social media for children under 15 was passed in its first reading by the National Assembly (lower house of parliament) of France.