Vietnam proposes barring children under 16 from posting, commenting, sharing on social media

Vietnam is set to order social media platforms to limit access for children under 16, becoming the latest nation—and the third in Southeast Asia—to tighten online safety provisions for minors.

Proposed Rules

According to a draft amendment to a decree on internet management, reported by Vietnamese state media on Friday, the new rules would:

• Bar children under 16 from posting, commenting, sharing, or reacting on social media
• Allow only passive viewing of content for underage users

At a meeting to discuss the rules on Thursday, Nguyen Thi Thanh Huyen, deputy director of the Authority of Broadcasting and Electronic Information, stated that accounts belonging to under-16s would need to be registered using a parent's or guardian's information. That adult "would then be responsible for supervising the content the child sees and the time they spend on the platform," the report said.

"A child's account, under the supervision of parents or guardians, can only view content. It cannot post, interact, comment, or share," Huyen added.

Platform Responsibilities

Social media companies will also be required to identify child users and ensure they are exposed only to age-appropriate content, according to Reuters, citing a copy of the draft amendment.

Unlike Australia—which introduced the world's first social media ban for under-16s last year—Vietnam's measures stop short of a full prohibition.

"The primary objective is not to ban or excessively restrict children's access to social media, but rather to ensure that when children use social media services, they are placed in an age-appropriate environment and protected from inappropriate risks," Deputy Culture Minister Phan Tam said at Thursday's meeting.

Broader Context

The measures align Vietnam with a growing global effort to restrict minors' access to social media platforms, aiming to protect them from cyberbullying, online fraud, and exposure to pornography, among other threats.

The draft decree also proposes new restrictions on online gaming, according to Reuters. These would require game operators to:

• Verify users' ages
• Register under-16 accounts through a parent or guardian
• Limit children to no more than 60 minutes of play per day

Vietnam's Social Media Landscape

Vietnam has the seventh-largest pool of Facebook users in the world, with approximately 89 million accounts registered as of last month. It also has an estimated TikTok audience of around 80 million.

Regional and Global Trends

These moves follow Australia's ban on social media for under-16s, which took effect in December and forces platforms to block underage users from having accounts.

A long list of countries—including India, China, Türkiye, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and several European nations (most recently France)—have since announced similar curbs.

Within Southeast Asia:

• Indonesia on March 28 became the first nation to ban under-16s from accounts on "high-risk" digital platforms, including YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Bigo Live, and Roblox.
• Malaysia started enforcing a similar ban on June 1.

Enforcement Challenges

The efficacy of such restrictions remains to be seen. Recent evidence from Australia suggests the social media ban has been undermined by "limited implementation, incomplete compliance, and substantial circumvention of social media restrictions." Last month, the Australian government announced it would double the penalty for breaches to A$99 million, after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stated that "there are still too many children on social media."

While Vietnam's proposed approach appears to strike a balance between a full ban and a lack of regulation, Facebook's parent company Meta suggested that technical enforcement challenges could be considerable.

Nguyen Thu Thao, Meta's public policy director for Vietnam, told VnExpress that platforms identify likely child accounts by analyzing behavioral patterns in how they interact with the platform.

"If children use social media only passively, platforms will no longer have the behavioral signals they need to identify a user as a child," Thao said. This would then weaken Facebook's ability to detect and protect children online.