Vietnam proposes banning under-16s from posting, commenting on social media as Meta, TikTok object

Nguyen Thi Thanh Huyen, deputy director of the Authority of Broadcasting and Electronic Information, told a consultation conference in Hanoi on July 23 that the provisions were added to tighten oversight and protect children online.

Accounts belonging to under-16s would have to be registered using a parent’s or guardian’s information. That adult would then be responsible for supervising the content the child sees and the time they spend on the platform.

“A child’s account, under the supervision of parents or guardians, can only view content. It cannot post, interact, comment or share,” Huyen said.

Children’s accounts would default to the highest privacy setting. Platforms would have to block harmful content on their own initiative and deploy automated age-detection systems.

They would also have to coordinate with authorities on reporting mechanisms and pass on urgent information when they detect child abuse online.

Nguyen Lam Thanh, head of TikTok Vietnam, said stronger protection for children is necessary but that a blanket ban on interaction should be reconsidered.

Most apps now carry social media features, he said, so barring under-16s from posting, commenting and sharing would come close to shutting them out of the internet altogether. The rule could also cut against the government’s own program on helping children interact safely and creatively online.

Platforms already offer supervised child accounts, he said, and regulators could strengthen guardian oversight through technical means rather than prohibition.

Nguyen Thu Thao, Meta’s public policy director for Vietnam, said platforms identify likely child accounts by reading behavioral patterns and activity, combined with AI that estimates age.

“If children use social media only passively, platforms will no longer have the behavioral signals they need to identify a user as a child,” Thao said, adding that this would weaken detection and protection.

The rule would also strip parents of the discretion to decide whether and how their own children use social media, she said.

Bui Thi Viet Lam, the U.S.-ASEAN Business Council’s representative in Vietnam, said a self-declared birth date at signup is a weak first layer that children routinely inflate to unlock full features.

Platforms compensate by analyzing behavior, she said. An account that repeatedly engages with teenage or adult content gets flagged and assessed accordingly.

A ban would remove those signals and push more children into misstating their age, at which point no child-specific protections apply at all.

“We are looking at social media in an entirely negative light. What about the positive effects, such as helping children build social interaction and supporting their studies?” she said.

The council recommended content controls, privacy protections, limits on contact from strangers, screen time management and parental monitoring tools instead. That age- and risk-based approach has worked in many countries, she said.

Le Quang Tu Do, who heads the authority, said the drafting board identified two risks in letting children comment and interact. Offensive or hostile comments can damage a child’s perception and emotional state, and children are exposed to online fraud.

“Those are the reasons the drafting board proposed this rule,” he said.

The board said it would weigh the feedback and study adding a data field that would let platforms identify a child’s account at the moment a parent registers it, so content controls and protections apply from the start.

The same draft would also restrict online gaming by minors. Game operators would have to verify ages, register under-16 accounts through a parent or guardian, and cap under-16s at 60 minutes of play a day across games from a single company.

Vietnam would be joining a widening push. France’s parliament approved a ban on social media for children under 15 on July 21, the first blanket ban in the European Union, and Australia was the first country anywhere to bar under-16s.

The draft has not been finalized and could change before adoption.