With Ireland’s national ‘Safer Internet Day’ taking place on 10 February 2026, Ireland has begun to question how social media has been left to run rampant in our country. As of this week, Tánaiste Simon Harris has declared, “We’re on the verge of a public health emergency in terms of social media.”
Although the Data Protection Act 2018 has set the age of digital consent at 16 years old, Ireland has been left with many users under the agreed upon age of digital consent. However, many social media platforms still offer over 13s to use their sites under the agreement of parental permission. This leaves Ireland in contemplation on whether or not to follow suit of Australia’s under-16 social media ban.
Although there have been consistent reports of the detrimental impacts of social media on children and young people; with the Irish Times reporting one in four children have experienced cyber-bullying in 2023. As of 2024, Cyber Safe Kids reported that even with the mental health impacts, 84% of under twelves in Ireland have a social media or instant messaging account. Whilst they further reported that 95% of eight-to-twelve year olds have their own smart phone.
Following the launch of the social media ban in Australia on 10 December 2025, the legislation saw the banning of all under 16 year olds from using major sites, such as; Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Threads and X. The creation of new accounts has been prohibited whilst existing profiles have been deactivated. But how is this Australian nation-wide ban being enforced?
As per the ban, if children and parents ignore these social media regulations, they are not the ones to suffer the consequences of infringement. Instead, responsibility is placed amongst the social media giants to ensure enforcement of the ban. If they fail to ensure compliance with the ban, these social media giants face fines up to $49.5 million (the equivalent of €28 million).
The effectiveness of the ban has been put up to question. The Guardian has reported that 4.7 million accounts were banned across social media platforms. Whilst within the first few days of the ban Meta (which owns Instagram, Facebook and Threads) reported they alone were able to ban 550,000 accounts. However, since the implementation of the ban, Australia saw an initial surge in the use of VPNs to falsify account locations and bypass local laws. Leaving the successfulness of the ban up to debate.
In other European countries, the legislation surrounding social media has begun to shift. Denmark has announced plans to ban under 15 year olds from using social media, whilst Norway is considering adopting a similar proposal. Similarly, the UK
has introduced a series of new safety rules as of July 2025. This sees large social media companies facing large fines or even jail, if their executives fail to ensure measures to protect young people from explicit and illegal content are introduced. As the world looks to make amendments surrounding social media legislation to protect their children and young people, is it time for Ireland to make the digital safety shift?
