South Korea Weighs Under-14 Social Media Ban and Default-Off Algorithms for Teens

South Korea's media regulator wants to bar children under 14 from creating social media accounts and switch off personalized recommendations and infinite scrolling by default for everyone aged 14 to 19. The proposals, announced Sunday by the Korea Media and Communications Commission (KMCC), would amend the Information and Communications Network Act and could be finalized by the first half of next year.

That timeline applies to the measures themselves. The commission has not set a date for the legislative changes, which depend on further discussions.

The move puts South Korea in the middle of a fast-spreading global debate over whether governments — not parents or platforms — should decide when minors can use social media, and whether addictive design features deserve the same regulatory attention as harmful content.

What exactly is the KMCC proposing?

The core of the plan is a set of amendments to the Information and Communications Network Act. They would require platform operators to verify users' ages — a significant new obligation — and prohibit children under 14 from creating social media accounts at all.

The government is also weighing a parental-consent exception. Under this option, children under 14 could open accounts if a parent agrees.

For teenagers aged 14 to 19, the commission wants default settings that disable:

• personalized recommendation algorithms that analyze users' interests and browsing histories,
• infinite scrolling, a feed design that keeps new content loading without end.

The KMCC first floated these measures during a presidential policy briefing in July. It says it will consult relevant ministries and stakeholders — explicitly including young people — before finalizing the package by the first half of next year.

The takeaway: this is a proposal with a target date for the rules, but no date yet for the law that would enforce them.

How far could the feature restrictions go?

Age limits are only part of the plan. The commission is also reviewing restrictions on autoplay and nighttime notifications — features it says could encourage excessive social media use among teens.

Nothing is settled on scope. According to the KMCC, the specific features to be regulated and the extent of the restrictions have yet to be determined.

That open question matters, because the range of options on the table is wide. Proposals vary from additional safeguards attached to teenage accounts to changing default settings across the board. Each version carries different costs for platform operators and different levels of regulatory bite.

The underlying shift is philosophical. Regulators have traditionally focused on blocking harmful content, user education and parental supervision. The Korean proposal asks a different question: should platforms be held accountable for design choices that keep users scrolling?

There's a mechanical reason regulators care. Personalized recommendation algorithms help users discover relevant content, but they can also prolong screen time by repeatedly suggesting similar material based on browsing histories. Infinite scrolling and autoplay remove natural stopping points. Nighttime notifications pull users back in.

The takeaway: the commission wants to regulate the architecture of attention, not just the content — but it hasn't decided how far to go.

Why are privacy and digital rights groups worried?

The proposal has prompted concerns on three fronts: privacy, effectiveness, and young people's rights.

Age verification is the flashpoint. Enforcing age restrictions would require platforms to verify users' identities, which raises concerns about excessive collection of personal information and its potential misuse. In effect, protecting minors could mean building identity checks that apply to everyone.

Effectiveness is the second problem. Minors could circumvent the restrictions by using someone else's account or providing false information — the same loophole that has dogged age-gating systems elsewhere.

The third concern is expressive freedom. Social media serves as a platform for communication, news and educational and cultural content. Restricting minors' access touches their freedom of expression and access to information, not just their screen time.

The takeaway: critics say the plan trades everyone's privacy and teens' information rights for restrictions kids may simply route around.

What did the critics and the regulator say?

Park Kyung-sin, a professor at Korea University Law School, criticized the proposed restrictions in a Facebook post. He compared them to Korea's controversial gaming shutdown system introduced in 2011 — a law that blocked under-16s from online gaming after midnight and was later repealed after years of criticism.

Park argued that authorities should address the causes and risks of excessive social media use rather than restrict access altogether.

"Rather than imposing a blanket ban on all minors at the expense of everyone's privacy, it would be better to provide targeted treatment for those struggling with social media addiction or filter out harmful content," Park said.

KMCC Chairperson Kim Jong-cheol pushed back on the idea that education can solve the problem alone. He stressed the need for minimum regulatory safeguards, saying excessive social media use among minors cannot be addressed through education alone.

At the same time, Kim framed the commission's approach in rights-based terms. He emphasized that teenagers should be recognized as individuals with fundamental rights, rather than merely as subjects of protection.

The takeaway: the regulator's own chair is trying to balance mandatory safeguards with an acknowledgment that teens are rights-holders, not just people to be shielded.

How does this compare with the rest of the world?

The debate over restricting minors' social media use has spread rapidly worldwide, and the thresholds vary widely:

• Australia has banned social media use for minors under 16.
• Canada and the U.K. are pursuing similar restrictions for the same under-16 age group.
• The UAE and Denmark have considered a minimum age of 15.
• The European Union has generally focused on those under 13.

South Korea's proposed under-14 cutoff, with a consent carve-out below that age, sits between the EU's lighter 13-plus norm and the stricter 16-line adopted by Australia and under consideration in Ottawa and London.

The country also has relevant history. Its 2011 gaming shutdown law made it one of the first democracies to impose a blanket nighttime access ban on minors — an experiment that Park's comparison invokes directly, and one that ended in retreat.

The takeaway: Korea is once again testing a hard age-based access rule where most democracies have settled on softer thresholds.

What happens next?

The KMCC plans to finalize the measures by the first half of next year after consulting ministries and stakeholders, including young people themselves. The legislative timeline remains undecided and will depend on those discussions.

The unresolved questions are the ones that will decide whether this becomes law in a meaningful form: which features — autoplay, nighttime notifications, or others — actually get regulated, how age verification works without excessive data collection, and whether the National Assembly has appetite for another blanket rule after the gaming shutdown's troubled history.