By Gina Romero
The writer is a UN Special Rapporteur for the rights to freedom of assembly and of association.
BOGOTA, Colombia | 17 August 2026 (IDN) — The global trend of imposing blanket social media bans on youth under 16 creates a civic-political vacuum where they can neither assemble nor digitally associate, effectively stripping them of political agency and collective voice.
Next October, I will present a report on youth activism—including Gen Z protests—to the UN General Assembly. In an overwhelming global response, I received over 180 submissions from nearly 70 countries, and I consulted with more than 500 young people. The forthcoming report, which will hopefully be available soon, highlights the vital contribution of youth activism, analyses the growing barriers and threats young activists face, and offers youth-informed recommendations. Ultimately, it frames youth activism as an essential driver of political participation, democratic sustainability, and human rights worldwide.
As expected, many stakeholders who engaged with me included the importance of the internet and social media for youth activism in their analysis. They reiterated that “internet access is a prerequisite for exercising peaceful assembly and association freedoms, and for civic participation”. Although they recognise that digital tools facilitate their activism, they also serve as tools for repression; they agree that restricting access is not a solution to the many challenges of internet and social media posts.
When Protection Becomes Exclusion
Across the globe, a quiet legislative wave is erecting digital barriers around society’s youngest members. In late 2025, Australia sparked a global policy debate by enacting broad social media bans for youth under 16. Soon after, a domino effect took hold across Asia, Europe, and the Americas, as governments scrambled to introduce age-gating mechanisms and digital access bans. Marketed under the warm rhetoric of child protection, these measures promise to shield teenagers from mental health crises, cyberbullying, and algorithmic addiction. Yet, beneath this well-meaning protective objective lies a dangerous civic side-effect: the systematic disenfranchisement of entire generations from their fundamental rights to freedom of peaceful assembly, association, and public participation.
For Generation Z and youth activists, especially those under 16, social media and digital platforms are not merely avenues for leisure; they serve as contemporary political infrastructure. In an era where physical public squares are hyper-regulated, or geographically out of reach for youth, and in some cases heavily militarised, online networks function as the primary assembly halls where identity is formed, and social bonds are built. Civic movements are born–enabling engagement and trust-building, solidarity, mobilisation, advocacy, fundraising, etc. Sweeping prohibitions threaten to sever these vital lifelines, trapping young people in a civic vacuum during the precise formative years when activist habits and democratic values take root.
The main analyses from my report on the bans on social media are the following:
1. Erasing the infrastructure of rights exercise
International human rights frameworks, particularly Articles 21 and 22 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), protect the rights to peaceful assembly and association for all human beings, without distinction based on age. In today’s interconnected landscape, these rights are exercised digitally just as much as physically. When governments enact blanket digital bans on under-16s, they effectively dismantle the infrastructure youth need to organise.
Unlike adult activists, youth under 16 lack the power of the ballot box. They cannot run for political office, nor do they command financial capital. Digital platforms provide their main mechanism for democratic leverage—a space to organise, support and connect with protest and solidarity movements, demand reforms, document human rights abuses in real time, and craft common political discourse, among other things. Eliminating youth access to social media removes their primary channel for gathering and solidarity, relegating them to an invisible periphery.
“A blanket ban on the digital participation of minors under 16 amounts to a superfluous and disproportionate restriction on their Article 21 rights, trapping them in a civic vacuum where they can neither vote nor associate digitally.” (USA)
2. A blueprint for repression and regional contagion
The global trajectory of age-gating highlights how rapidly protective legislation can be adapted for political containment. Following Australia’s legislative precedent, multiple nations introduced or accelerated similar age-restriction measures. In authoritarian and hybrid regimes, child protection serves as a convenient Trojan horse to suppress youth dissent and control information ecosystems. Social media bans ignore physical realities: not all young people are equally safe or have equal access.
Furthermore, state-enforced age restrictions often operate alongside arbitrary internet blackouts and vague cybercrime statutes. In conflict zones and politically sensitive regions, the total disruption of digital networks acts as a mechanism of archival erasure and civic suppression.
“Digital platforms are not supplementary for youth activists—they are the primary infrastructure for both association and assembly… The destruction of telecommunications infrastructure repeatedly severs activist networks at critical moments, constituting a form of archival erasure targeting civil society memory.” (Gaza)
Who Pays the Highest Price?
3. Disproportionate impact on marginalised youth
While blanket restrictions harm all young citizens, their impact falls disproportionately on vulnerable and marginalised under-16 cohorts. For LGBTQI+ youth, minority students, informal workers, and refugees living in socially conservative or geographically isolated communities, online platforms are not optional luxuries; they are essential lifelines. These virtual spaces provide access to rights education, mental health support, and safe communities that do not exist in their immediate physical environments.
Shutting down digital networks removes the only available haven for youth at risk, especially girls in restrictive environments. In contexts where girls face structural exclusion from physical civic spaces, digital restrictions deprive them of the only available avenue for civic voice.
“For youth under 16, social media bans can be devastating. These platforms are not just for entertainment; they are lifelines for isolated students seeking information and community. Such restrictions unintentionally reduce participation and discourage students from standing up for their rights” (Kerala, India)
By enforcing total exclusions, governments force marginalised youth back into physical and social isolation, depriving them of the peer networks necessary to claim their basic rights and organise against systemic discrimination. Paradoxically, these restrictions expose young people to greater harm by pushing them into unregulated underground apps to evade restrictions or into insecure physical spaces.
4. The surveillance trap: biometric verification risks
Enforcing mandatory age limits on social media requires robust age-verification systems. In practice, this forces platforms to rely on invasive mechanisms: mandatory government ID uploads, AI-driven facial scanning, or behavioural inference tracking. Paradoxically, mechanisms implemented to “protect” young people end up creating deep surveillance infrastructures that track their digital footprints from childhood.
For underage dissidents and student activists, losing online anonymity is perilous. Biometric data and identity verification databases can easily be accessed or co-opted by state security apparatuses, leaving young activists vulnerable to harassment, political profiling, and state retaliation before they even reach adulthood.
Protection Without Digital Silence
5. A rights-based way forward
Protection and participation are not mutually exclusive; they are complementary principles of international human rights law. To safeguard youth safety without infringing upon their freedom of assembly and association, international bodies and civil society coalitions advocate for a fundamental shift in regulatory policy:
- States and policymakers must:
a) Refrain from imposing blanket, age-based social media bans; instead, enforce corporate compliance with human rights due diligence, transparency, and data protection standards throughout products’ lifecycles.
b) Hold private platforms legally accountable for digital violence, arbitrary content moderation, or the amplification of algorithmic disinformation, misogyny, and anti-rights narratives aimed at undermining youth activism.
c) Ensure all digitally-mediated restrictions comply with international human rights standards, and do not endanger, intimidate, silence or isolate youth from civic-political life. Any government restriction on digital access must undergo rigorous testing for legality, necessity, and proportionality under Articles 21 and 22 of the ICCPR. Blanket bans fail this test because they apply indiscriminate restrictions across entire demographics regardless of context.
d) Assess the compound harm resulting from digitally enabled surveillance and biometric verification, including its chilling effects on youth activism, and ensure adequate reparations, including for harmful mental health impacts.
2. Companies and digital platforms must:
a) Review digital services, content moderation, algorithms and data architectures in direct consultation with diverse young people to ensure they protect rights by design.
b) Ensure that access to and use of essential digital services and infrastructure, including social media platforms, is not conditional on pervasive surveillance of young people.
- Instead of imposing total bans, the international community must require tech platforms to adopt “safety-by-design” frameworks. This includes default privacy protections, transparent algorithmic moderation, and robust reporting mechanisms against abuse.
- Educational curricula must prioritise digital rights, media literacy, and online security, empowering young citizens to navigate platforms safely and participate meaningfully in public life.
Defending a Generation’s Voice
I welcome the recent decision by France’s Constitutional Council, which declared that an under-15 social media blanket prohibition disproportionately infringes fundamental rights. While acknowledging the legitimate goal of safeguarding minors from cyberbullying, screen addiction, and harmful online content, it indicated that the ban violated the right to thought and speech by failing the strict proportionality and necessity tests, and it raised serious privacy concerns. This ruling sets a major legal precedent across Europe, underscoring that statutory efforts to protect youth online cannot come at the expense of core freedoms. I hope other Courts and regional bodies follow this.
Relegating youth under 16 to a digital silence does not make them safer; it strips them of their voice. If society aims to cultivate engaged, democratic citizens, it must defend their right to assemble, associate, and speak—both on and offline. (IDN-InDepthNews)