Malaysia on Monday began enforcing rules that bar children younger than 16 from owning social media accounts, joining a small but growing group of countries tightening online protections for young users.

Under the new framework, social media platforms with at least eight million users — a threshold that captures Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube — must implement age-verification systems and block under-16s from creating accounts. Companies that fail to comply face penalties of up to 10 million ringgit (about US$2.5 million). Parents whose children manage to circumvent the rules will not be penalised, Newswire reported, citing Malaysia’s Communications and Multimedia Commission.

The regulator said the rules were not designed to keep children off the internet altogether but to set expectations for platforms on online harms and age-appropriate safeguards. Platforms will also be required to introduce safety-by-design features — including protections against manipulative design that encourages compulsive use — and to act against underage accounts and harmful content. A grace period will be allowed for age-verification systems to be fully implemented.

Meta’s Southeast Asia public policy director Clara Koh had warned in April that a blanket under-16 ban risked pushing teenagers off protected apps and into “unregulated corners of the internet.” Meta has rolled out “teen accounts” for under-18s as a softer alternative. Monash University Malaysia social science lecturer Benjamin Loh flagged data-privacy concerns over the use of government IDs for age checks, and said the absence of parental penalties left a “major gap” that could blunt enforcement.

Australia, Brazil and Indonesia have introduced similar age-based restrictions, while Britain, France, Spain, Denmark, Thailand and South Korea are studying comparable measures. In Sri Lanka, SJB MP Dayasiri Jayasekera last week submitted a parliamentary motion to ban under-15s from social media with mandatory age verification for platforms — a proposal that closely tracks the Kuala Lumpur model. Sri Lankan policymakers have also been weighing broader digital restrictions for children as part of a wider child-online-safety push.

Sources: Malaysia enforces ban on social media accounts for children younger than 16 — Newswire.