South Korea wants Meta's youth safety rules to apply around the world

South Korea's media regulator says that new rules Meta agreed to follow in the United States should also protect young users everywhere else in the world. The Korea Media and Communications Commission, known as the KMCC, made this statement on August 27. It came just one day after Meta — the company that owns Facebook and Instagram — agreed to pay up to $18 billion to settle lawsuits in the U.S. Those lawsuits said Meta built its apps in ways that hurt the mental health of children and teens and made them addicted to scrolling.

As part of the U.S. settlement, Meta agreed to make several changes to how its apps work for younger users. These include setting limits on how long teens can use the apps, cutting back on push notifications that pull users back in, and offering feeds that don't use algorithms to decide what to show. Meta also agreed to hide 'likes' and other engagement numbers for younger users, and to use stronger tools to verify how old users really are.

The KMCC said these kinds of changes are important not just in the U.S., but for young people everywhere. The commission believes that social media companies must take more responsibility for keeping children and teenagers safe online. South Korea's parliament already has seven bills waiting to be voted on that would create stronger online protections for minors.

South Korea has been working on its own rules for social media and young people for some time. In July, KMCC chairman Kim Jong-cheol told President Lee Jae-myung that the regulator was looking at placing step-by-step limits on social media use by minors. He said the goal is to limit the features that keep teens hooked on their phones for too long.

The proposals being discussed in South Korea would ban social media access for users under 14 altogether. For teenagers between 14 and 19, the rules would limit things like recommendation algorithms and other features designed to keep users engaged for as long as possible. A KMCC spokesperson said the commission supports moving these bills forward through open public discussion.

South Korea is not alone in this effort. Many countries around the world are trying to figure out how to protect children online. However, some people have raised concerns about these kinds of laws, saying they could raise privacy issues and may be hard to enforce. The debate about how best to keep young people safe on social media is still going strong across the globe.