It’s time we hold big social media tech companies liable for our children

The global fight for digital childhood.

The era of unrestricted smartphone access for Filipino children might soon end. House Bill 9965, the Children’s Social Media Safety Act, aims to protect minors by introducing a strict age firewall. It completely bans children under 13 from creating accounts and requires parental permission and high privacy settings for teens under 18.

Instead of letting big tech companies pass the burden of online safety onto exhausted parents, this bill threatens non-compliant platforms with massive fines up to ₱50 million or total operational bans.

What the world is doing vs. the Philippines

To determine if House Bill 9965 is the right path for the Philippines, we need to examine how the global regulatory landscape has fractured into three distinct ideological camps. 

In the United States, policy is bogged down by fragmented state-level gridlock and First Amendment legal battles. Instead of a national ban, the US relies on the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) to regulate data collection, leaving individual states like Florida to pass their own separate restrictions for minors under 14.

Across the Atlantic, the European Union completely avoids blanket age bans. Instead, the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) focuses on a “safety-by-design” framework. It shields minors by mandating algorithmic transparency, banning targeted user profiling, and requiring strict privacy-by-default settings, while leaving specific age limits to individual member states. 

Meanwhile, neighboring Southeast Asian nations have taken a much more aggressive route. In a massive regulatory shift, Indonesia and Malaysia have enacted total social media bans for minors under 16, using strict electronic Know Your Customer (eKYC) biometric and ID verification systems to police platform entry.

Standing at the crossroads of these global frameworks, the Philippines has proposed a unique strategy through HB 9965, which functions as a hybrid corporate liability model. 

The bill blends elements from both models by enforcing an absolute ban for children under 13 while adopting Europe’s safety-by-design data protections for teenagers up to 18. Crucially, this blueprint shifts the regulatory burden away from exhausted parents and directly onto big tech, threatening platforms with severe financial penalties for non-compliance.

Is this the right route?

Seems like it, but only if the government builds the administrative teeth to back it up. Banning children under 13 from social media is a legally sound step that treats digital access like driving or purchasing age-restricted goods. 

However, the bill’s success hinges entirely on implementation. If regulators allow tech platforms to rely on flimsy “Enter Your Birthdate” checkboxes, minors will easily bypass the firewall. The state must demand robust age assurance technology, such as privacy-preserving facial analysis or secure e-governance ID checks during registration.

Furthermore, we cannot simply lock children out of digital spaces without offering healthy alternatives. The bill’s mandate for the Department of Education to integrate digital literacy into the curriculum—combined with funding for device-free local parks and recreational spaces—is vital. True safety means building an environment where children can safely grow up without being engineered for addiction.

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