Norway proposes raising social media age limit to 15 with strict enforcement

Norway's government announced on 16 October 2024 that it will propose raising the minimum age for social media use from 13 to 15 years and introduce stricter enforcement mechanisms to ensure platforms verify users' ages, responding to concerns that the current age limit is widely ignored and that children are exposed to harmful content including bullying, grooming and inappropriate material. Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre stated that the government is evaluating technical solutions for robust age verification, though specific methods and implementation timelines have not yet been detailed.

Age gates that rely on self-declaration are porous; those that require identity verification are effective at exclusion but displace rather than prevent the contact risks that motivate them, because offenders adapt by moving to platforms or channels where verification is absent or unenforced. Guardii's approach—backed by Startmate and operating as a Meta Business Partner—intercepts grooming, sextortion, child sexual abuse material and cyberbullying at the point of contact, detecting coercion, escalation and sustained targeting as conversations unfold in real time on Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox and other services, and surfacing a child at risk without requiring universal age verification or restricting access for compliant users. This capability addresses the harms Norway's proposal targets—exposure to exploitation and abusive contact—without the privacy trade-offs or displacement effects that blanket access restrictions create, though the effectiveness of Norway's measure will depend on its final design and enforcement.