South Korea Weighs Social Media Age Limits and Curbs on Addictive Features

Account restrictions are only part of the plan

South Korea is considering rules that would restrict social media registration for children under 14 and change how platforms serve older teenagers, including switching off personalized recommendations and infinite scrolling by default. Two National Assembly bills show how those ambitions could become legal duties: one seeks parental confirmation of usage limits for children under 16, while another targets automated recommendations for users under 19.

The Korea Media and Communications Commission (KMCC) is reviewing amendments to the Information and Communications Network Act that would require platforms to check users' ages. Officials are also considering allowing children under 14 to register with parental consent, alongside restrictions on autoplay and notifications at night.

The central choice reaches beyond deciding who can open an account. South Korea must also decide what a platform should be allowed to do once a teenager logs in. A service can remove harmful videos while still using an endless stream of recommendations to keep a young person watching.

President Lee Jae-myung has instructed the commission to develop policy measures. The commission plans public consultation, including discussions with young people, and aims to prepare an action plan in the first half of next year. The final age boundaries, services covered, verification methods, penalties and legislative timetable remain undecided.

Teenagers have a direct stake in those decisions. Social media provides friendships, school information, news and cultural content, as well as exposure to harmful material and pressure to keep scrolling. Rules governing access would change an established part of daily life for many students, while rules governing design would change how that experience works.

Two bills offer different ways to regulate use

The government's review sits alongside parliamentary proposals with different age thresholds and responsibilities. In the National Assembly's August 2024 bill, lawmaker Cho Jung-hun and 10 other lawmakers proposed requiring parental confirmation of daily social media usage limits and whether potentially addictive algorithms should be allowed for children under 16.

Bill No. 2202761 would give parents a formal role in approving how their children use a service. Its explanatory statement cites a Ministry of Science and ICT finding that 36.7% of teenagers struggled to control the time they spent watching short videos, the highest proportion among the age groups examined.

A second proposal, the National Assembly's March 2026 bill, was introduced by lawmaker Lee Yeon-hee and 13 others on March 11, 2026. Bill No. 2217369 would restrict automated information recommendation algorithms for users under 19, require age checks and require guardian consent when children under 14 register.

The March proposal would also introduce definitions of social networking services and algorithms, clarify platform responsibilities and create penalties for violations. It identifies Articles 2, 42-4 and 70-2 of the Information and Communications Network Act as the provisions to change.

The proposals therefore place responsibility in different places. The 2024 bill centers on parental approval of settings. The 2026 bill places direct limits and verification duties on platforms. The commission's approach combines registration restrictions for younger children with changes to features used by older teenagers.

How the proposals reached Parliament

The official legislative records show a debate extending across several parliamentary sessions. Nine related bills are pending in the National Assembly, covering a wider range of possible measures than either of the two detailed proposals alone.

• August 13, 2024: Cho Jung-hun and fellow lawmakers introduced Bill No. 2202761.
• August 14, 2024: The bill was referred to the Science, ICT, Broadcasting and Communications Committee.
• November 20, 2024: The committee took up the bill.
• February 25, 2025, and February 24 and March 3, 2026: A committee subcommittee considered the proposal.
• March 11, 2026: Lee Yeon-hee and fellow lawmakers introduced Bill No. 2217369. It was referred to the committee the next day.
• March 24, 2026: Both proposals appeared in the subcommittee's proceedings.

KMCC Chairperson Kim Jong-cheol outlined the government's phased approach at a presidential policy briefing at Cheong Wa Dae on July 16. Subsequent discussions have included youth bodies and meetings involving middle and high school students. Parliamentary deliberation and the commission's policy review remain separate routes toward a final framework.

What changes when the feed changes?

Personalized recommendation algorithms use signals such as viewing history and interests to choose what appears next. They help people find material they enjoy, but repeated suggestions can also extend a viewing session far beyond what someone initially intended.

Infinite scrolling removes the stopping point that would otherwise appear at the bottom of a page. Autoplay starts another video without requiring a fresh choice. Notifications at night can draw someone back to a service after they have put a phone aside. The commission is examining these features alongside account restrictions.

Default settings matter because they determine the experience users receive without changing anything themselves. Switching a feature off by default would make it inactive when an eligible teenage account begins using the service. A legal prohibition would go further by preventing its use altogether.

French Socialist lawmaker Marietta Karamanli, who has pursued European parliamentary action on platform design, argues that regulation should address the mechanisms behind prolonged use:

"Endless scrolling, autoplay, late-night notifications, and recommendation algorithms are designed to maximize users' attention, since the underlying business model is based on advertising," she said.

South Korea's proposals would extend protection beyond removing individual harmful posts. Platforms would face responsibility for how they arrange content and prompt users to return, including for teenagers old enough to keep their accounts.

The numbers behind the concern

Teenagers' risk of excessive smartphone dependence rose from 40.1% in 2023 to 42.6% in 2024 and 43.0% in 2025. That is an increase of 2.9 percentage points over two years. The March 2026 bill cites the Ministry of Science and ICT's 42.6% figure in explaining why lawmakers want stronger safeguards.

The surveys address different aspects of digital life. Smartphone dependence screening assesses difficulty managing use and its effects on daily activities. Social media participation measures how many people use a service. Short video surveys examine another activity that can occur across several kinds of platform.

The Korea Press Foundation's 2025 teenage media survey recorded social media use at 70.1% and daily use at 48.8%. It put participation at 36.0% among elementary students, 82.9% among middle school students and 92.7% among high school students. Another set of government statistics for 2025 put those school groups at 54.2%, 88.6% and 92.5%, respectively.

The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family's 2024 survey of youth media use and harmful environments found that 94.2% of teenagers had used short videos. Taken together, the figures describe both widespread exposure and a substantial group needing help managing use, making the design of everyday services a practical policy concern.

Adults and teenagers want different safeguards

An online survey of 1,000 people aged 14 to 58, conducted from August 14 to 19, found that 70.7% supported restrictions based on age and 29.3% opposed them. The Korea Press Foundation's Media Research Center published the findings in Public Perceptions of Creating a Safe Social Media Environment for Youth.

Teenagers aged 14 to 18 took a different position: 41% supported age restrictions and 59% opposed them. Support reached 77.5% among adults with children aged 5 to 18 and 78.3% among adults without children in that age group.

The same survey found more agreement around making platforms safer. Asked which approach deserved greater priority, 59.8% chose stronger platform responsibility, compared with 40.2% who chose restrictions on access. Among teenagers, 72% preferred safer platform features and environments.

More than nine in 10 respondents assigned social media companies responsibility for minors' privacy settings, protection from harmful content and examination of recommendation algorithms. Support for age limits therefore sits alongside a demand that companies improve the services young people continue to use.

Age checks bring privacy and enforcement problems

Platforms would need a way to determine which users fall below each legal threshold. That creates a practical tension: collecting more personal information may help enforce restrictions, while increasing the amount of sensitive data entrusted to companies or verification providers.

Elizabeth K. Englander, a psychology professor and founder of the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center at Bridgewater State University, has warned about privacy risks from verification systems using artificial intelligence and facial recognition. She also points to determined teenagers finding ways around restrictions.

A child could provide false information or use another person's account. A system built around the age recorded on an account would then apply its safeguards to the wrong person. Platforms would need reliable checks while limiting the collection, storage and possible misuse of personal information.

Australia illustrates the enforcement challenge. A government announcement said seven in 10 surveyed parents reported that their children could still use social media after the country's restrictions began. For South Korea, enforcement would require attention to continued access as well as the number of accounts removed.

The gaming shutdown remains a warning

South Korea has already tried restricting young people's access to a popular digital activity. Introduced in November 2011, the gaming shutdown system barred children under 16 from online computer games between midnight and 6 a.m.

The compulsory restriction was abolished in January 2022 after criticism of its effectiveness and effects on basic rights and the gaming industry. A system allowing young people and guardians to choose gaming hours remained, alongside support for families struggling with excessive use.

Park Kyung-sin, a Korea University Law School professor, compared the social media proposals with that earlier system in a Facebook post. He argued for addressing the causes and risks of excessive use through more focused measures:

"Rather than imposing a blanket ban on all minors at the expense of everyone's privacy, it would be better to provide targeted treatment for those struggling with social media addiction or filter out harmful content," Park said.

Kim Jong-cheol has argued that education alone cannot address excessive social media use and that minimum regulatory safeguards are necessary. He has also stressed that teenagers are individuals with fundamental rights, rather than simply people to be protected. Those two positions put proportionality at the center of the government's task: protection must leave room for communication, learning and expression.

Other countries offer competing models

Australia's restrictions took effect on December 10, 2025, requiring major platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent children under 16 from creating or maintaining accounts. The obligations fall on companies, making their age checks and enforcement practices central to the policy.

Britain is pursuing restrictions for children under 16 alongside safeguards for older teenagers, including limits on use between midnight and 6 a.m. for those aged 16 and 17. Canada, New Zealand and Spain have also pursued an age threshold of 16, while Denmark has considered 15.

Indonesia introduced restrictions in March on accounts for children under 16 on major digital platforms, and Malaysia subsequently adopted measures. Brazil has chosen a supervision model, requiring accounts belonging to children under 16 to be linked to legal guardians' accounts.

European Union guidelines under the Digital Services Act focus on private accounts by default, safer recommendations and disabling features that encourage excessive use. Discussions about an EU Kids Act have also included a threshold of 13 and supervised accounts for children aged 13 and 14.

Courts have drawn different boundaries. France's Constitutional Council struck down a blanket restriction on accounts for children under 15 in August. In Florida, a federal appeals court allowed enforcement of an account ban for children under 14 and parental consent requirements for those aged 14 and 15 while litigation continues. South Korea faces choices among access limits, parental supervision and duties governing platform design.

How to judge whether safeguards help

Rachel Rodgers, a professor of applied psychology at Northeastern University, has called for large, representative studies tracking adolescent mental health and body image concerns before and after restrictions take effect. Such research would help governments compare changes in young people's lives with changes in platform access.

Cho Sang-sik, an education professor at Dongguk University, has urged careful assessment of harm associated with different media, continued monitoring and periodic evaluation of regulations. That approach would allow rules to be reviewed as services and teenage habits change, a problem South Korea encountered during the gaming shutdown era.

Julian Sefton-Green, a professor of new media education at Deakin University, argues that social media belongs within a wider picture of young people's friendships, learning and wellbeing. He has also called for schools to involve young people in open discussions about the response.

The practical test for South Korea will be whether its chosen measures reduce harmful exposure and unwanted use while preserving useful connections. That means examining what teenagers encounter, how platforms encourage them to stay and what support is available when something goes wrong, alongside the age attached to an account.

Key Points

• South Korea is considering registration restrictions for children under 14 and changes to recommendations and other features for older teenagers.
• Two parliamentary bills propose different duties: parental approval of settings for children under 16, and algorithm restrictions for users under 19.
• Teenage smartphone dependence risk rose from 40.1% in 2023 to 43.0% in 2025.
• A survey found 70.7% support for age restrictions, but 59% of teenage respondents opposed them.
• Privacy, enforcement and access to communication and information are central concerns.
• The commission plans consultation before completing its policy framework; legislation and implementation require further decisions.