By Michael Seifert
In Albania, the government has decided to block the online platform TikTok for a whole year. The measure is expected to take effect in February 2025. This has been reported by many media outlets in Germany, too, citing the Albanian news agency ATA. The background to the decision is an incident in November near a school in the capital, Tirana, in which a 15-year-old student stabbed a 14-year-old to death and seriously injured another student. The act of violence is said to have been preceded by an argument between the students on the TikTok platform. After the crime, the perpetrator showed himself on TikTok with the bloody knife, as Albanian media reported. This act had plunged the entire country into mourning and led to demonstrations and discussion events on protection against violence and bullying in schools. Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama justified his decision, among other things, by the fact that in talks with parents, 90 percent were in favor of a one-year block on TikTok. This decision was criticized by young people, an opposition politician and business people who were interviewed by the media. Of the 2.4 million inhabitants in Albania, 1.5 million apparently have a TikTok account.
In November 2024, Australia had already passed a comprehensive social media ban for children and young people under the age of 16. According to this, TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram will no longer be available to this age group as a result of a law that is unique in the world.
In Spain, a government bill is also being discussed that aims to protect children from online threats. The law is intended to introduce virtual contact blocks for offenders and to raise the minimum age for opening social media accounts. An innovative app for digital age verification has already been developed for problematic sites, such as pornography. Spain is thus pre-empting an EU-wide regulation, as the EU wants to oblige platforms to verify the age of users by October 2027, otherwise they will face fines and a ban on the platforms.
In Germany, such far-reaching measures tend to be viewed critically. The German Federal Center for the Protection of Children and Young People in the Media (BzKJ), for example, takes a different approach based on German and European law: It focuses on digital children’s rights and sees the providers of digital platforms as having a duty. Sebastian Gutknecht, the director of the BzKJ, explains: “Children and young people have a right to digital participation and to explore digital spaces safely. In Europe, providers have a legal obligation to make their platforms as safe as possible for young people by taking structural precautions. However, I believe that a complete ban on social media for under-16s would be going too far.”
On the other hand, Thuringia’s new education minister Christian Tischner of the CDU sees a social media ban for under-16s along Australian lines as a positive step: in his view, this is a good topic for the Standing Conference of Education Ministers. There is bullying in social networks, and the psychological effects on children and young people are great. However, control is difficult, Tischner told the dpa.
tun25010701