The Supreme Council for Media Regulation and the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority in Egypt issued a joint decision imposing new measures on social media platforms to protect children and adolescents under the age of 15 from the risks of harmful content, exploitation, bullying, harassment, and blackmail, while requiring platforms to take privacy and digital rights into account when implementing the rules.
Different Rules Based on Age Group
The decision divides the targeted users into two groups. For children under 13, platforms must not create, activate, or make available independent personal accounts for them. Users aged 13 to under 15 may be allowed to have accounts provided that Safe Mode is activated automatically and mandatorily, and the child is prevented from disabling it independently for as long as they remain within this age group.
The decision also requires platforms to adopt effective and proportionate means of verifying age and limiting attempts to circumvent age restrictions, while adhering to personal data protection principles and minimizing the data collected for verification purposes.
Review of Existing Accounts and Compliance Deadline
The requirements are not limited to new accounts; platforms must review existing accounts and take the necessary measures to bring into compliance accounts that are proven or likely, according to reliable mechanisms, to belong to users under 15. The system must also include a clear mechanism for complaints and age correction when errors occur.
The regulatory authorities granted platforms a period of no more than three months from the date the decision takes effect to implement the requirements. They must also submit an implementation plan and timeline within 30 days of the date the decision is published and notified to them, with the document explaining the technical and operational procedures required for compliance.
What Will Change in Practice?
The decision shifts responsibility for age verification and managing levels of protection from families and users alone to the platforms themselves, while adopting a graduated protection model instead of a single rule for all ages. This means platforms will need to modify registration mechanisms, account management, and content oversight, in addition to providing channels for addressing errors in age estimation.
The key practical issue lies in striking a balance between effective age verification and minimizing the data collected, a point highlighted by the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority when it affirmed that implementation must combine child protection with respect for privacy and digital rights. The published text does not specify particular technical details regarding acceptable verification methods or mechanisms for measuring compliance, leaving these aspects to implementation plans and subsequent application.
Engineer Khaled Abdel Aziz, head of the Supreme Council for Media Regulation, said that protecting children is a shared responsibility among the state, the family, society, and platforms, explaining that the aim is not to isolate children from technology but to regulate its use in a safe and responsible manner. For his part, Engineer Mohamed Shamroukh, chief executive officer of the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, said that the decision adopts protection proportionate to age and risks, while technical and regulatory development continues to keep pace with changing digital risks.