Indonesia to Become 'FirstNon-Western Nation' to Ban Under-16s From Social Media on March 28

The Indonesian government has set a date. Communications Minister Mutia Hafid announced that, starting March 28, the country will bar anyone under 16 from creating accounts on “high-risk” social media platforms — a policy she framed as making Indonesia the first non-Western nation to impose such a ban. ^[1][2][3]

The mechanics, as described, lean on identity verification. The user confirms who they are. The platform confirms they are not, in fact, fifteen. ^[4]

To summarize the gap between the announcement and the apparatus:

The intent, of course, is to protect teenagers from the platforms. The instrument, of course, is to put the government in the middle of them. Both of those things can be true at the same time, and both of them being true is, in fairness, the part of the press release that did not get a paragraph.

I will not relitigate the screen-time-and-mental-health debate in this segment. I will note, neutrally, that studies have found that screen time does not cause mental health problems in teenagers, and that some researchers describe heavy screen usage as a symptom rather than a cause. ^[5][6] Translation, for the policymakers in the room: kids who are already struggling often go online more, because the alternative is going outside and being perceived. The minister did not put it that way. The minister put it the other way.

The teenagers themselves, the policy presumes, will simply not open accounts. In my own experience as a teenager — sorry, mom — they will not. They will find a way. They will use a parent’s phone. They will use a friend’s. They will lie about their age with the confidence of someone who has been filling out forms since they could read. The ban therefore does not stop teenagers from being on the platforms. It stops them from being on the platforms as themselves, which is, in fairness to the policymakers, a meaningful distinction for a database that needs to know who is who.

The other thing, of course, is mass surveillance and widespread censorship, which in journalism is known as a government’s wet dream. The transcript caught that line, so we are moving on.

The other other thing is identity verification specifically. My face is on the internet, so the policy does not trouble me personally. The work I do, however, is enabled by trusted sources who choose to remain anonymous. Risking their identities may mean risking their lives. The proposed instrument apparently has no journalism exception carved into it, not to mention a plan for the data afterward, because the proposed instrument is still in the form of a press conference. ^[4]

Indonesia has a certain reputation for data protection. I will leave the specifics to the reader and to the relevant regulators, who are presumably aware of their own performance reviews and do not need me to read them out loud.

There is, in fairness, a more interesting question underneath the policy, which is what the actual harm is, and what the actual response would be if the harm were taken seriously. The minister’s answer is: screen time, ban the screens. The research the minister did not cite suggests: mental health, treat the mental health. The difference between those two answers is the difference between an enforcement action and a policy. Indonesia has chosen, for now, the enforcement action. The teenagers will let us know how that goes.

To be clear — to be fair to the minister — the minister is not the first communications minister anywhere to reach for the first tool in the room. The first tool in the room is almost always identity, because identity is the only thing the state can actually check. The state cannot check whether a teenager is happier after a ban. The state can check whether a teenager has verified their age. So the state checks the age.

So: March 28. Under-16s. High-risk platforms. Identity verification. The first non-Western nation. The rest of the sentence — what it will do to the teenagers, what it will do to the sources, what it will do to the platforms, what it will do to the data — has not yet been written. The government will write it. The teenagers will read it. The sources will, presumably, find out about it the way sources find out about everything, which is to say: by being told, after the fact, by someone they trust, who has already deleted the message.

In the meantime, the 1.3% of you watching who are under 16 — and I know you are there, because the analytics say so — should probably get a head start. Sorry, mom.