Indonesia Enforces Under-16 Ban on Major Social Media and Gaming Platforms

A sudden lockout for young users

On a recent school night in Jakarta, 14-year-old Rara reached for her phone to scroll through TikTok and check on a Roblox game she plays with classmates. Instead of the usual rush of videos and chat notifications, she was met with prompts asking her age — and then a message saying her accounts were no longer available.

“I was shocked,” she said. “All my friends are there. It feels like suddenly we’re not allowed to be part of it.”

Rara is one of millions of Indonesian children being cut off from some of the world’s most popular social media and gaming services under a sweeping new government rule that effectively bars anyone under 16 from using designated “high-risk” digital platforms.

What the new rule does

The regulation, announced March 6 by Indonesia’s minister of communication and digital affairs, Meutya Hafid, began to be enforced nationwide around March 28. It requires major platforms including YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Threads, X, Roblox and Bigo Live to identify users younger than 16 and disable or restrict their accounts. New sign-ups by under-16s are supposed to be blocked.

Officials say the move is necessary to confront what they describe as a crisis of online harm and addiction among children in one of the world’s largest social media markets.

“We are facing a digital emergency,” Meutya said when she unveiled the measure. “For too long, parents have been left to fight alone against the giant of algorithms that targets our children with harmful content.”

The ban is among the most far-reaching youth online safety rules implemented anywhere and makes Indonesia the first country in Southeast Asia to adopt a blanket minimum age of 16 for mainstream social media and certain video and gaming platforms. It is being closely watched by governments and technology companies as a test of how far states can go in pushing children off commercial platforms that have become central to daily life.

The legal framework behind the ban

The policy rests on Government Regulation No. 17 of 2025, known as PP TUNAS, which sets out a broad framework for child protection in “electronic systems.” That regulation requires online services to assess whether their products pose low, medium or high risk to children based on factors such as exposure to strangers, explicit content, financial loss and data exploitation.

In theory, it allows for graduated access: children aged 13 to 15 may use some services with parental consent, while 16- and 17-year-olds gain broader access under safeguards.

The March ministerial regulation takes that framework a step further. For platforms classified as “high risk,” it removes any discretion and directs them to exclude users under 16 altogether, regardless of parental approval.

“These platforms cannot treat children as commodities for data and algorithms,” Meutya said in a separate briefing, arguing that the state has a duty to intervene when commercial interests conflict with children’s rights.

How platforms are expected to comply

Authorities estimate the rules could affect tens of millions of Indonesians. Officials often cite a figure of roughly 70 million children the government hopes to protect in digital spaces, in a country where nearly one in three people is under 18 and cheap smartphones and mobile data have driven rapid social media adoption.

To comply, companies must put in place what the government calls “age verification and age assurance” systems to both prevent underage sign-ups and detect existing under-16 accounts. The regulation does not mandate a specific method but requires that the end result — no under-16 users on designated services — be achieved.

Industry executives and policy documents point to several likely tools:

• uploading national identity cards or other documents
• using selfies analyzed by artificial intelligence to estimate age
• linking a child’s account to a verified parent or guardian who confirms age
• drawing on data from mobile carriers or device-level settings

In late March, Indonesia’s communication ministry said it had sent formal notices to eight platforms — YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Threads, X, Roblox and Bigo Live — requiring compliance plans. The ministry has publicly described X and Bigo Live as showing the most complete early cooperation. X, formerly known as Twitter, has updated its safety information in Indonesia to state that users must be at least 16 years old “as required by Indonesian law.”

TikTok and YouTube have said they support efforts to improve online safety for young people and are working with the government on implementation, though neither has detailed how many accounts have been or will be disabled in Indonesia or what technologies they are deploying to verify ages.

The communication ministry has warned that there will be “no compromise” on compliance and has reminded companies that Indonesian law allows for administrative sanctions, including fines, feature limitations, service suspension and eventually blocking access to platforms that refuse to obey orders.

Despite the strong rhetoric, the rollout is designed to be gradual. There has been no public announcement of a single cutoff date when all under-16 accounts must go dark. Instead, platforms are expected to progressively identify and report underage users and to tighten their sign-up systems.

Parents, advocates and critics split over the impact

On the ground, the change is already being felt in homes and schools, even as many children look for ways around it.

“I agree with this policy,” said Yunita, a mother in South Jakarta whose 13-year-old daughter plays Roblox and watches beauty tutorials on YouTube. “Sometimes she is on her phone four or five hours a day. It is difficult for parents to control because the content keeps coming. Maybe with this rule she will read more books, go outside more.”

Child protection advocates in Indonesia largely welcome stronger safeguards but caution that implementation will be complex.

“Social media has positive sides for learning and creativity, but the key is the right age and guidance,” said Diena Haryana, director of the SEJIWA Foundation, which works on child safety and mental health. “We do expect there will be complaints from children and confusion from parents in this adjustment period.”

Digital rights groups and some academics are more skeptical. They question whether age bans can be reliably enforced and warn of unintended consequences if children are pushed off large, well-moderated platforms into smaller services or unregulated corners of the internet.

Civil society organizations have also raised concerns that infrastructure built for child protection — such as mandatory age gates and expanded government powers to block services — could be repurposed to limit free expression more broadly.

Indonesia’s Electronic Information and Transactions Law, which underpins PP TUNAS, already gives authorities wide latitude to order platforms to remove content deemed unlawful or disruptive. That law has been used in recent years to prosecute online critics and to justify temporary blocking of services, fueling criticism from rights advocates.

“Whenever the government increases its technical and legal ability to control who can be online, there is a risk those powers will expand beyond the original purpose,” said one digital rights researcher in Jakarta, who asked not to be named to avoid repercussions. “Child protection is important, but we also need clear safeguards.”

Equity and education concerns

There are equity concerns as well. Indonesia has a significant digital divide between urban and rural areas and between income groups. Experts note that children from better-off families in big cities are more likely to have access to VPNs, multiple devices and parents willing to help them navigate or even circumvent new restrictions. Poorer children, who often rely on free platforms like YouTube for educational content, may simply lose access.

Schools are beginning to confront the implications. Some teachers say they are reevaluating assignments that assume students can watch explainer videos on commercial platforms at home. Officials emphasize that PP TUNAS does not restrict access to “low-risk” educational platforms and encourage parents and schools to direct children to age-appropriate services, but concrete alternatives are not always available or widely known.

Part of a global push—under a different regulatory backdrop

Indonesia is not alone in pushing for stricter age limits. Australia has brought into force a law that requires certain social media platforms to bar under-16s, reporting that millions of accounts have been revoked. In Europe, lawmakers are considering common rules that would set a de facto minimum age of 16 for many online services, with parental authorization required for some younger teens. Brazil has adopted rules requiring accounts of children under 16 to be linked to a legal guardian, though it stops short of an outright ban.

What sets Indonesia apart is the combination of a categorical under-16 prohibition on some of the world’s largest platforms and an existing regulatory system that already gives the state strong influence over what citizens can see and do online.

So far, authorities have not released figures on how many Indonesian accounts have been deactivated. Nor is it clear what happens to content and social graphs built by young users — such as videos, messages and in-game purchases — or whether they can be restored when a user turns 16.

‘We will find another window’

For now, many families are improvising.

Rara says some of her classmates have already found ways to stay online, including by using their parents’ identities to register new accounts or by switching to lesser-known apps that have not yet been designated as high risk.

“I understand the danger,” she said, sitting at the kitchen table where her parents now insist she leave her phone at night. “But all our school information, our group chats, our hobbies — they are there. It’s like you close the door, but the world is still outside. We will find another window.”

Whether Indonesia’s experiment ultimately reduces harm for young people or simply changes where and how they spend their time online may take years to measure. In the meantime, the country’s children are becoming a test case in a new global effort to redraw the boundaries of childhood on the internet.