Governments around the world are making it increasingly difficult for teenagers and children to access social media.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced plans on Tuesday to ban anyone younger than 16 from accessing social media platforms. The ban still needs to be approved by the country’s parliament, but a bill could be introduced as early as next week.

“We will protect them from the digital wild west,” said Mr. Sánchez in a speech at the World Governments Summit in Dubai, The New York Times reports.

In Greece, a high government official told Reuters on Tuesday that the country is also “close” to announcing its own ban on social media for children under 15.

If the plans continue, Spain and Greece will join Australia, which last year was already first country in the world to enforce a national ban on social media accounts for teenagers.

Australian law is aimed at protecting children from the worst parts of the internet, including cyberbullying, eating disorder content, and posts promoting self-harm. It prohibits anyone under 16 from having accounts on some of the internet’s biggest social media networks.

The 10 currently affected platforms include TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Snapchat, YouTube, Reddit, Kick, and Twitch. The policy requires these platforms to use age-verification technology to ensure that the account holder is 16 or older. Any account tied to a juvenile must be deactivated.

But not everyone is on board. Reddit and some teenagers have filed lawsuits The claim that the ban violates the “freedom of political communication” of teenagers. Other groups such as the ACLU argue that similar age verification legislation proposed in the US in recent years violates the First Amendment.

However, proposals for these restrictions seem to be spreading around the world.

End of last year, French President Emmanuel Macron backed a draft law that would ban anyone under 15 from accessing social media.

In Denmark, the government announces plans in November to ban access to social media for anyone under 5, except for teenagers aged 13 and 14 if they have parental consent.

In November, Malaysia announced plans to ban children under 16 from using social media starting this year, but the move is on hold not effected.

Although not banning social media accounts, last summer the UK began implementing the Online Safety Act, a law passed in 2023 that aims to prevent children from accessing pornography and other “harmful” content. The law requires platforms such as Bluesky, Discord, Grindr, Reddit, and X to use age-verification tech to ensure that users attempting to access such material are at least 18 years old.

Here in the US, there is no federal ban on children using social media. But, at least nine states passed laws requiring parental consent or age verification for minors.