Cyprus to submit social media age limit bill in December

Cyprus intends to submit a bill to parliament in December setting a minimum age of 15 for access to social media, Deputy Research Minister Nicodemos Damianou confirmed on Thursday, as reported by the Cyprus Mail.

The bill would bar anyone under 15 from creating or maintaining accounts on social networking platforms, with responsibility for enforcing the limit resting on the platforms themselves rather than the state.

"Platforms should implement appropriate mechanisms that recognise the age of the individual, be able to prove that the individual is beyond the age limit specified, without storing other personal data," Damianou said. He affirmed that the legislation would set out the specific obligations platforms must meet.

The mechanism for checking a user's age will not depend on the state building its own verification system, nor on the government directly negotiating with individual platforms. Instead, the government plans to plug into an age verification tool the European Commission is developing centrally, known as the 'age verification blueprint', and embed it within the country's existing Digital Citizen app.

Under this model, when someone tries to open an account on a platform such as Instagram or Facebook, the platform would query the verification system, which checks the user's age against national population registry data and returns only a yes or no confirmation that the person meets the age threshold. No name, date of birth or other personal data is to be shared with the platform itself, with teenagers aged 14 and above already integrated into the Digital Citizen system.

Platforms given time to adapt

Damianou said platforms would be given a period of a few months to adapt once the law takes effect, and would also be required to retroactively verify the age of existing users who joined before such checks existed. "This cannot be done overnight," he conceded. He said platforms failing to comply would face consequences under the EU's digital services act.

His comments followed Wednesday's announcement by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen of the 'EU Kids Act', a proposed framework that would bar children under 13 from social media entirely, allow 13- to 15-year-olds to hold supervised "mini accounts" with a one-hour daily limit, and apply special content provisions for those aged 15 to 18. Damianou said Cyprus was waiting to see how much flexibility the final EU framework would leave member states to set their own national thresholds.

Damianou said the domestic bill is at "a fairly advanced stage", with public consultation to run through the government's 'citizen's voice' platform alongside targeted consultation with organised groups before the December submission. An impact assessment will also be carried out by the child's rights commissioner Elena Perikleous. He said attitudes among EU member states had "dramatically shifted", with concerns over addictive algorithms and their effects on children having since prompted a near unanimous shift in position across the bloc. The government has cited data showing that 98 per cent of young people in Cyprus actively use social media, the highest rate recorded in the EU, as part of its rationale for the measures.