Lee Hae-rin is a City Desk reporter at The Korea Times, covering social issues, tourism and taekwondo. She is passionate about speaking up for the rights of minorities, including women, LGBTQ+, people with disabilities and animals as well as discovering the latest makgeolli trend in town. Feel free to reach her at lhr@koreatimes.co.kr.
Will Korea join global push to restrict teen use of social media?
Su-young, a 12-year-old sixth grader whose in-person classes were suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic, uses her smartphone at her home in Wonju, Gangwon Province, in this file photo from Feb. 8, 2023. Korea Times photo by Choi Joo-yeon
By Lee Hae-rin
From VPN workarounds to past shutdown failures, Korea faces hurdles, opposition to outright ban
Korea is cautiously entering the global debate over whether to ban social media platforms for children and teenagers, as countries like Australia and Spain move toward sweeping restrictions on underage users.
Around the world, governments are tightening rules for minors online, citing rising concerns over addiction, mental health, cyberbullying and exposure to sexual and violent content.
In December, Australia became the first country to bar under-16s from mainstream social media, spurring at least 15 European governments, including France and Spain, to move toward similar restrictions. Asian countries such as India and Malaysia and U.S. states like Florida and Texas are pursuing their own age limits or bans.
In contrast, Korea is moving more cautiously.
An official at the Korea Media and Communications Commission (KMCC) told local media that there is “no concrete government road map yet” on youth social media regulation, noting that the commission is “closely watching legislative moves overseas, but this is an area that requires broad social consensus.”
In the meantime, a bill to limit social media use by those under 16 remains stalled in the National Assembly, hindered by blurring lines between platforms and the ease of technical workarounds.
The caution is rooted partly in political memory.
In 2011, the government introduced a mandatory nighttime shutdown on video games for those under 16, but scrapped it a decade later after criticism that the rule infringed on rights, hurt the game industry and failed to curb addiction. That experience left policymakers wary of similar heavy-handed measures.
Meanwhile, social media use among Korean teenagers is already widespread. A 2025 survey by the Korea Press Foundation found that 70.1 percent of teens use social media, about half of them daily.
The KMCC invited middle and high school students to a policy roundtable in Seoul on Feb. 5 to hear directly from those who would be most affected. Students said social media was their primary way of seeing the world but acknowledged they often struggled to control how long they scrolled.
Kim Jong-cheol, center, chairman of the Korea Media and Communications Commission (KMCC), delivers a welcoming address during a policy roundtable on social media for children and adolescents in Seoul, Feb. 5. Courtesy of KMCC
“It’s hard to sit through long news programs, but short clips on social media make it easier to understand what’s going on,” said a high school senior surnamed Choi. Others said they relied on Instagram, X, YouTube and TikTok to keep up with global trends, pursue niche interests and connect more closely with classmates.
However, several teens said they spend two to five hours a day on social media apps, often filling spare moments with short-form videos.
The most pointed criticism focused on algorithms and comparison culture.
“When comments with lots of likes rise to the top and similar opinions are shown over and over, it feels like your thinking is being pulled in one direction,” said a first-year high school student surnamed Park, warning that echo chambers can fuel confirmation bias.
A middle school student said that repeatedly seeing “celebrity diet videos and heavily edited body images” led her to view herself negatively, while another recounted a classmate who ended up in the emergency room after being influenced by extreme dieting content.
Despite such experiences, most teens at the meeting rejected the idea of legally enforced time limits or outright bans. They warned that blanket bans could push young people to falsify their age, use VPNs or retreat to less visible parts of the internet.
“It just pushes people toward ‘dark routes’ that adults can’t see,” said a second-year high school student surnamed Shim, referring to the youth social media bans being introduced in Australia. “Social media is not something that is harmful in every way. Instead of blocking use itself, there should be step-by-step digital literacy education from lower grades,” he said.
Teenager Bruno scrolls through social media on his phone in Madrid, Spain, Feb. 4. Spain will seek to ban social media for under-16s to protect them from harmful content such as pornography and violence, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said, drawing a furious response from X owner Elon Musk. AFP-Yonhap
Many participants pointed to media literacy education as the most realistic remedy. They called for interactive, example-driven classes that help students recognize manipulation, misinformation and addictive design patterns rather than one-way lectures.
The KMCC plans to reflect the views shared at the roundtable in future policy reviews and legal reforms. KMCC Chairperson Kim Jong-cheol emphasized that the meeting will not be a one-off and pledged to expand youth engagement through more structured public forums.