The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has announced a package of measures to combat disinformation and abuse in the digital environment, the main focus of which will be the prohibition of the use of social networks by minors under 16 years of age if platforms do not guarantee effective age verification systemsThe announcement, made during the Dubai Global Governments Summit, focused on the challenges of digitalization, places the protection of children and adolescents as a priority for the Executive in view of the impact that social networks have on mental health, exposure to harmful content, and the spread of hoaxes. According to Sánchez, platforms cannot continue to operate as spaces outside the law when they directly affect fundamental rights. During his speech, the president was especially critical of the current role of digital platforms. In his opinion, social networks today operate as a "failed state", an environment in which rules are broken, criminal behaviors are normalized, disinformation prevails over truth, and a significant portion of users are subjected to hate attacks.Alongside this access restriction, the Government proposes to **strengthen the responsibility of technology companies**, so that their top executives can face **criminal consequences if they do not remove illegal content**, such as hate speech, serious disinformation, or criminal material. The Executive's plan also aims to **reinforce control mechanisms over algorithms**, with the objective of preventing them from amplifying harmful content, and is part of the European debate on the need to **regulate large digital platforms more firmly**. Furthermore, Sánchez has asked the **Public Prosecutor's Office** to act and investigate **possible crimes linked to the use of artificial intelligence** on platforms such as **Grok (X's AI)**, as well as on **Meta or TikTok**, considering that these tools may be harboring or disseminating illegal content
The proposal opens a new political and social scenario, by placing for the first time a direct prohibition of access to social networks for minors under 16 years of age, a measure that will foreseeably generate debate between defenders of digital protection and those who warn about its possible effects on rights and freedoms and is framed within a context in which other countries are adopting similar measures, such as Italy, France or Australia, which was the pioneering territory in taking this decision.