Norway proposes raising social media age limit to 15

Norway's government has announced plans to raise the minimum age for social media use from thirteen to fifteen, with Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre stating the measure is intended to protect children from the power of algorithms and from harmful content. The proposal follows similar initiatives in Australia and includes plans for more robust age-verification technology, though details of enforcement mechanisms have not yet been finalised and the legislation will require parliamentary approval.

An elevated age threshold alters the compliance boundary but does not, by itself, equip platforms or parents with the means to detect when a child of any age is being targeted by an adult exhibiting grooming behaviour, soliciting sexual imagery or deploying sextortion tactics in private messages. Risk persists wherever conversation occurs, regardless of whether a user's declared age meets a statutory minimum. Detection technology that identifies coercive patterns, escalation and sustained targeting in real time addresses the harm itself rather than relying on a static age gate. Guardii surfaces those patterns across messaging platforms including Instagram, Snapchat, Discord and Roblox, alerting a parent, school or authority to a conversation in crisis without requiring the child to self-report or the offender to comply with an age rule, so that intervention becomes possible before an abusive relationship is established.