MENA social media bans: Can governments protect children without expanding surveillance?

From Canberra to Paris, governments are increasingly turning to social media restrictions and age verification systems in an attempt to protect children online.

Australia became the first country in the world to prohibit children under 16 from accessing several major social media platforms, while France has since passed legislation banning children under 15 from using social media, with implementation due to begin later this year. 

In the UK, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced plans in June to introduce similar restrictions that would prevent children under 16 from accessing platforms including Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, X, and Facebook by 2027.

But in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), where online spaces have long been shaped by government regulation, censorship and surveillance concerns, experts warn that child safety measures could take on a very different meaning.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) became the first Arab and Muslim-majority country to prohibit children under 15 from creating or operating personal social media accounts. 

The UAE government said the policy aims to address concerns over children's exposure to inappropriate content, unsafe online interactions, excessive social media use and the collection of personal data.

Authorities have also been empowered to "take all necessary measures [against platforms] in the event of non-compliance", raising questions over whether other MENA governments will adopt similar measures.

Saudi Arabia has since emerged as a potential next adopter, with its Shura Council calling for age-verification requirements and restrictions on social media use by those under 16.

While countries including Indonesia, Malaysia and Turkey have previously tightened restrictions on young people's use of social media, outright bans on underage users still remain rare.  

Nonetheless, governments worldwide have increasingly focused on protecting children from cyberbullying, harmful content and online exploitation; however, rights groups have warned that age verification systems can also create new risks, particularly in countries where privacy protections and independent oversight remain limited.

The New Arab examines whether MENA states are likely to follow the UAE's lead, and whether restrictions designed to protect children could also deepen existing patterns of digital control.

How MENA states have traditionally governed online spaces

The UAE is the first country in the Arab world to introduce a minimum age for social media accounts. 

However, governments across the region have long maintained extensive frameworks governing online platforms.

These approaches have traditionally focused less on age restrictions and more on content monitoring, website blocking, government requests for user data and broad cybersecurity legislation.

Rights groups have highlighted that many MENA governments have enacted digital laws that grant authorities significant powers over online speech, often justified by national security, public order, or morality concerns.

In June 2023, the League of Arab States announced a unified social media regulation strategy reportedly influenced by the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) and Germany’s Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG).

However, digital rights organisations have warned that regulatory models adopted from Europe do not automatically come with the democratic safeguards that underpin them, including judicial oversight, independent regulators and protections for freedom of expression.

"Historically, MENA states relied on site-wide content blocking rather than granular age verification. However, this is evolving," Ramy Raoof Halim, a Nonresident Fellow on Surveillance & Technology (MENA) at The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, told The New Arab.

Halim said the UAE's introduction of social media restrictions for users under 15 reflects a wider shift towards identity-based systems.

"This means moving away from simple, self-declared age gates towards more stringent identity-based assurance," he said.

"Legislation specifically targeting child online safety is emerging but remains nascent. While some states have existing provisions within broader data protection or media laws regarding minors, these are often secondary to state-led censorship mandates."

He added that the UAE’s Child Digital Safety Law, which came into force in January 2026, marked a move towards more formal obligations for platforms to protect children.

As more than 20 countries worldwide consider restrictions on children's access to social media, experts say MENA governments are moving at different speeds on digital regulation.

Gulf states, particularly the UAE and Saudi Arabia, have emerged as regional leaders in developing digital regulation frameworks.

"The UAE has established a centralised 'Regulatory Intelligence Office' and sophisticated legal frameworks for child safety and data protection," Halim said.

"Saudi Arabia, through the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA), has aggressively modernised its data protection and AI governance infrastructure."

Asia Anwer, Digital Rights Researcher and Project Coordinator at the INSM Foundation for Digital Rights (INSM Iraq), said Gulf countries have made the most significant progress in strengthening digital regulation.

By contrast, she described Iraq's digital governance framework as "fragmented and underdeveloped."

"Gulf countries have rapidly expanded privacy and data protection legislation, while Jordan has recently implemented a comprehensive Personal Data Protection Law," she told The New Arab. 

"Iraq, however, remains among the countries where digital rights protections continue to lag behind regional developments."

Palestine and the risks of identity-based verification

For Palestinians in Israeli-occupied territories, debates over online safety and digital regulation take place within a wider context of unequal access, surveillance concerns and restrictions affecting digital expression.

Lama Nazeeh, Advocacy Manager at Palestinian digital rights organisation 7amleh (the Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media), said existing digital policies demonstrate how political realities shape online spaces.

"The occupation that fragments Palestinian land now fragments Palestinian connectivity," she told The New Arab.

Nazeeh argued that Palestinians experience a form of digital inequality, with Israeli users, including settlers, having access to more advanced connectivity infrastructure while Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza face significant restrictions.

She said the destruction of telecommunications infrastructure amid Israel's genocidal war on Gaza had further intensified these challenges.

"The genocide [in the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023] that UN bodies have named is also waged on infrastructure," she said.

Nazeeh also warned that stronger age verification requirements could create additional barriers for Palestinians who already face difficulties accessing digital services.

"We have documented surveillance technologies tested on Palestinians and exported worldwide, and leaked evidence of mass coordinated takedowns," she said.

"We do not want to hand any actor a cleaner map of who is speaking."

She argued that identity-based verification systems could exclude people who lack recognised documentation.

"Many Palestinians lack the recognised identity documents these systems expect, which would deepen an exclusion they already face, having been shut out of basic digital and financial services," she explained. 

"In Gaza, where most of the network is destroyed, layering verification burdens on people who can barely get online is its own cruelty."

Nazeeh stressed that protecting children online remains important, but warned that safeguards must not be built on systems that increase surveillance.

"Child safety is a real goal. It must not be built on architecture that surveils and excludes the most vulnerable users."

Morocco, Egypt and the politics of 'child safety'

Dima Samaro, Executive Director at Skyline International for Human Rights, cautioned that debates over children’s access to social media in the MENA region cannot be separated from the wider history of digital regulation.

"This is not a new wave of digital regulation," she told The New Arab. "It is an acceleration of something governments here have been doing for years, which is using technology law to consolidate control over what people can say, read, and organise around."

Samaro said governments across the region have repeatedly used different justifications to regulate online spaces.

"The justification changes, but the impulse does not. During COVID, it was a public health issue. Before that, it was national security or protecting public morality. Now, increasingly, it is children’s online safety."

She pointed to Morocco as a key example of how European-inspired digital regulation could be introduced in a country where concerns over freedom of expression remain.

Morocco has been developing legislation to regulate social media platforms by expanding the powers of its broadcasting regulator, HACA, while drawing heavily on the language of the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA).

The DSA aims to increase platform accountability, require greater transparency and protect users from illegal content.

However, Samaro argued that when similar frameworks are adopted elsewhere, the safeguards that underpin European regulation may not always accompany them.

"But what does not get borrowed is everything that makes the DSA meaningful in practice: the courts that can challenge it, the press that can scrutinise it, the civil society that can push back against it," she said.

"What travels across borders is the regulatory architecture. The safeguards that make it work stay behind."

She argued that Morocco's Gen Z 212 protests in late September 2025 demonstrated why governments across the region increasingly view social media platforms as both communication tools and spaces for youth mobilisation.

The movement, one of Morocco's largest youth-led protest movements in recent years, relied heavily on platforms such as TikTok, Discord, and Instagram to organise demonstrations.

According to Samaro, young Moroccans increasingly moved towards platforms such as Discord because they believed mainstream platforms were vulnerable to state pressure.

"Young people organised through Discord because mainstream platforms had a well-documented record of handing over user data and removing content at government request," she said.

"For a generation that watched content about Palestine and war crime documentation systematically disappear from Instagram and Facebook in real time, that lesson did not need explaining."

Samaro said the response to the protests highlighted why digital regulation cannot be viewed solely through the lens of child protection.

This included Moroccan authorities launching a crackdown that resulted in mass arrests and the deaths of three demonstrators.

Jordan subsequently blocked Discord, while Iraq banned Roblox, with both governments citing child protection and online safety concerns.

"At Skyline, we have documented how governments across the SWANA region blocked platforms like Discord and Roblox, citing child safety, while the timing and targets of these bans point clearly to a different motive entirely," she said.

"After Morocco showed what a generation could do when it organised on apps the state cannot monitor, other governments in the region moved quickly to block those same apps before their own youth could do the same."

Egypt offers another example of how child online safety measures could be introduced within a wider environment of digital restrictions.

In January, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi urged authorities to review age-based restrictions on minors' access to digital platforms, prompting Egypt's House of Representatives to begin drafting legislation to tackle what lawmakers described as "digital chaos".

The proposals have since been compared with child online safety frameworks introduced in countries including Australia and the UK.

However, rights groups have warned that introducing such measures in Egypt would take place against the backdrop of existing restrictions on online expression.

"If you already know who is saying what, and you have laws that criminalise criticism of the government, age verification is not protecting young people. It is making them easier to find," Samaro said.

Halim similarly argued that online regulation in Egypt and across the wider region is often influenced by state security priorities alongside efforts to address genuine digital harms.

He said governments frequently rely on broad cybercrime and counterterrorism laws that frame online activity as a matter of national security and public order.

"In Egypt, for example, there have been many cases where content creators on different social platforms are targeted with harsh sentencing and police arrests for violating ‘family values’," Halim told The New Arab.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s age verification model

Saudi Arabia is emerging as one of the countries most likely to follow the UAE's approach to regulating young people's access to social media.

Earlier this year, the country's Shura Council called on the Communications, Space and Technology Commission (CST) to establish age-verification requirements and usage restrictions for social media platforms used by those under 16.

Officials said the proposed measures could help address concerns over children’s exposure to harmful content and excessive social media use.

However, ALQST for Human Rights reported that both cybersecurity and counterterrorism laws have been used to restrict freedom of expression online. 

"Saudi authorities also block access to many websites they deem to be in violation of Saudi law," the organisation told The New Arab. 

The independent grassroots organisation, established to promote and protect human rights in the Gulf kingdom, added that Saudi authorities have prosecuted individuals over their online activity, including a journalist who was executed this year over posts published under a pseudonym.  

The group also highlighted cases involving people sentenced for social media posts, including a British national who was detained in Saudi Arabia during a visit over content he had posted online while in the UK.

Meanwhile, digital rights groups have warned that stronger identity requirements could create privacy risks in countries where independent oversight remains limited.

"The concern about children's wellbeing online is real and deserves honest policy engagement," Samaro said.

"But age verification systems require identity documents to be tied to online activity. In countries with functioning independent institutions, that is a serious privacy risk that can at least be contested, litigated, and revised. In much of SWANA, the same system becomes a surveillance tool with a child protection label on the front."

She argued that many countries in the region either lack comprehensive data protection laws or have weak enforcement mechanisms.

"Most countries in the region either lack data protection laws entirely or have frameworks that are outdated, poorly enforced, and offer no meaningful barrier between the data platforms that collect data for age verification and governments that demand access to it."

The UAE's restrictions on under-15s include mandatory verification requirements involving digital identity checks and AI-supported technologies. Self-declaration of age will not be considered a valid form of verification.

Emirati authorities have said the policy aims to protect children from inappropriate content, unsafe online interactions, excessive use and the collection of personal information.

Lisa Dittmer, Amnesty Tech's researcher on children's and young people's digital rights, warned that implementing bans requires identifying users online.

"We know that the only way to implement these bans is through age verification," she told The New Arab.

"To ban children, we need to know who the children on the internet are. And that means in some way or another, we will need to identify people."

Dittmer warned that requiring users to submit identity documents could have consequences beyond child protection.

"One solution for that is actually identity documents. And that dramatically increases the risk of age verification being abused as a sort of smoke screen for de-anonymising people, for tracking them online, even if there are privacy protections in place."

She added that identity checks could discourage users from participating online.

"People knowing that they have submitted documents, that they have ID'd themselves at one point, there's a chilling effect, where people aren't quite sure what's being done with their data and how they’re being tracked and whether this data could be passed on to their governments."

Have social media bans worked elsewhere — and could they work in MENA?

As governments worldwide move to restrict children's access to social media, questions remain about whether such policies can achieve their intended aims.

Australia's landmark legislation, which came into force after becoming the first country to ban social media access for under-16s, has become a key test case for whether age-based restrictions can be effectively enforced.

However, researchers remain divided, as evidence on nationwide social media bans is still limited and long-term data on their impact are yet to emerge.

Early indications suggest that implementing such restrictions may prove more difficult than introducing them.

A study by software testing firm KJR, which previously advised the Australian government on age assurance, found that major platforms were not consistently verifying users’ ages months after the ban came into force.

KJR found that none of the 50 test accounts declaring the user to be 16 were asked to provide proof of age, raising questions over whether age verification systems can reliably prevent underage access.

The findings renewed criticism that users may bypass restrictions by entering false birth dates or using alternative platforms.

Amnesty Tech's Lisa Dittmer said banning children from social media entirely risks failing to address the wider problems associated with online harms.

"Simply shutting children and young people out will prove ineffective ultimately because children and young people are tech-savvy and they will know how to get around this," she told The New Arab.

Instead, she argued governments should focus on creating safer online environments through stronger platform accountability, improved design and digital literacy.

"It's a core issue around the world that these bans are being rolled out very fast without adequate consultation with children, young people, civil society and all the experts who have been doing research on this for decades."

Dittmer said that while concerns about children's online safety are legitimate, bans risk offering a simple solution to a complex problem.

"These teen bans seem to offer a simple solution but actually fail to address the core issues."

In the MENA region, Halim believes more governments are likely to introduce restrictions on young people's social media access, but warned that the motivations behind such policies may differ from those seen in Western countries.

"While Western models focus on protecting minors from algorithmic harm or commercial exploitation, MENA regimes may adopt these bans to consolidate control over the digital environment, using 'child safety' as a socially palatable justification for tightening access and enforcing state-managed digital identities," he said.

Halim said the effectiveness of any future restrictions would depend on several factors, including governments' ability to implement age verification systems, the availability of digital infrastructure and the role social media plays in young people's daily lives.

"Governments must balance their desire to restrict platforms with the necessity of these tools for economic modernisation and state-sanctioned messaging," he said.

He added that social media has become central to youth culture, political discussion and news consumption across the region.

“There is significant tension between the desire to protect traditional social values and the reality that social media is now the primary space for youth cultural expression, political discourse, and news consumption.”

For Skyline International's Dima Samaro, the challenge for governments is not whether children should be protected online, but whether those protections can be achieved without creating new risks.

"The answer to protecting children online is not less access and more restrictive regulation but better design, stronger platform accountability, and genuine investment in digital literacy and in helping families and young people in the region navigate online spaces safely," Samaro said. 

She argued that governments should focus on addressing the underlying problems behind online harms rather than relying primarily on restrictions.

This includes requiring platforms to improve moderation systems, increase transparency, tackle harmful content and give users greater control over their online experiences.

A new digital divide?

The debate over social media bans in the MENA region reflects a wider global struggle over how governments should balance child protection with digital rights.

Few experts dispute that children face genuine risks online. Research has linked excessive social media use with concerns around mental health, cyberbullying, exposure to harmful material and exploitation of personal data.

However, rights groups warn that the methods used to address these risks matter.

As MENA governments debate whether to follow the UAE's lead, the central question remains whether new restrictions will genuinely protect children — or risk creating new systems of surveillance in a region where digital freedoms are already contested.