Pinterest CEO Backs Social Media Ban for Children Underneath 16

Pinterest CEO Invoice Prepared is supporting the worldwide regulatory wave of social media bans focusing on underage customers.

“As each a CEO and a mother or father, I imagine we should be sincere: social media because it exists right this moment just isn’t protected for youths beneath 16,” Prepared wrote in a LinkedIn post. “We want clearer guidelines, higher instruments for folks, and extra accountability throughout the tech ecosystem.”

In an opinion piece printed by TIME Magazine on Friday, Prepared criticized the engagement-focused design of social media platforms and the rising incorporation of AI chatbots, claiming that the practices are having a unfavourable affect on the well-being of children utilizing these platforms.

He likened social media firms to the tobacco executives of the final century who didn’t act “within the public’s finest curiosity” and “needed to be shamed and sued into submission.”

“Our business has had years to mitigate these harms, however has repeatedly failed. The time for self-regulation has handed, and if tech firms don’t change, then the trail needs to be apparent to lawmakers,” Prepared wrote. “We want a transparent customary: no social media for teenagers beneath 16, backed by actual enforcement, and accountability for cell phone working methods and the apps that run on them.”

Australia was the primary nation to ban under-16s from social media in a landmark determination that went into impact in December 2025. Since then, a wave of nations has begun following in Australia’s footsteps, with varied social media ban plans being launched by legislators across the globe, particularly in Europe.

The ban goals to handle the intense mental health outcomes and the specter of online sexual predators that plague youngsters and youths with unrestricted social media entry.

In response to the newest World Happiness Report from the College of Oxford’s Wellbeing Analysis Centre, excessive charges of web use correlate with decrease life satisfaction for younger individuals, with the impact particularly seen in women. Knowledge popping out of Latin America additionally confirmed that algorithmically curated content material was worse for consumer psychological well being than communication-focused social media platforms. And social media use within the Center East and North Africa, the place it’s among the many highest on this planet, correlated with larger stress and extra depressive signs

The report, printed on Thursday, additionally cites main social media critics who argue that there’s “overwhelming proof” of sextortion and cyberbullying and “compelling proof” of social media-linked melancholy and nervousness in younger individuals.

The main scientists cited within the research additionally declare that social media use just isn’t “moderately protected for youngsters and adolescents” and that the “fast adoption of always-available social media by adolescents within the early 2010s” was “a considerable contributor to the population-level will increase in psychological sickness that emerged by the mid 2010s in lots of Western nations.”

However critics of social media bans say the measures are ineffective at preserving youngsters off social media, and a few declare that the age verification requirement may create mass surveillance systems which can be ripe for abuse by unhealthy actors.

Pinterest has eliminated social options for teenagers, as Prepared shared within the article, making each account run by a consumer beneath 16 utterly non-public with no discoverability, messaging, likes, or feedback from strangers. Nonetheless, Gen Z makes up over 50% of Pinterest customers, in response to the CEO.

“Our expertise exhibits that prioritizing security and well-being doesn’t push younger individuals away; it builds belief,” Prepared wrote. “The price of inaction is a era of younger individuals overwhelmed by nervousness and melancholy. Proper now, adolescence is being performed out inside a worldwide social experiment run by tech firms.”

Pinterest particularly backs the App Store Accountability Act, which was not too long ago approved by the Home Power and Commerce Committee and can make its approach to the Home ground. The act proposes that app shops institute age verification and hyperlink the units of minors to folks or guardians to require parental consent.

Comparable device-level age restrictions have gained traction in state legislatures throughout the nation, as nicely.