Cyprus plans social media age limit of 15 under bill due in December

Nicosia, Cyprus. Cyprus plans to submit a bill to parliament in December setting a minimum age of 15 for access to social media, Deputy Research Minister Nicodemos Damianou said on Thursday. The proposed law would place responsibility for enforcing the limit on platforms rather than the state.

Platform obligations

The bill would prohibit anyone under 15 from creating or maintaining accounts on social networking platforms.

“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 said the legislation would specify the obligations platforms must meet.

European verification tool

Cyprus does not plan to build its own age-verification system or negotiate directly with individual platforms. Instead, the government plans to use the European Commission’s centrally developed “age verification blueprint” through the existing Digital Citizen app.

When a user seeks to open an account on platforms such as Instagram or Facebook, the platform would query the verification system. The system would check the user’s age against national population registry data and return only a yes-or-no confirmation of whether the person meets the age threshold.

No name, date of birth or other personal data would be shared with the platform. Teenagers aged 14 and above are already integrated into the Digital Citizen system.

Implementation period

Damianou said platforms would be given several months to adapt after the law takes effect. They would also be required to retroactively verify the ages of existing users who created accounts before such checks were introduced.

“This cannot be done overnight”, he said.