Mexico banned violent and sexual content on social media for children and teenagers on Wednesday, joining a global movement on regulating technology but drawing questions about the government’s approach and legality.
President Claudia Sheinbaum signed a decree prohibiting digital platforms from allowing people under 18 to be exposed to or recommended content that “generates or promotes” a range of harmful content. That includes hate speech, extreme violence, abuse, sexual violence, suicide, deliberate self-harm, eating disorders, school violence, cyberbullying and sexually explicit material.
The decree will require social media companies to immediately remove content or accounts that promote violence and to verify users’ ages. They will have to offer parental supervision tools, provide mechanisms for reporting violent content and maintain a round-the-clock point of contact for the authorities. And they will be required to immediately alert the authorities when life-threatening content is spotted.
The decree won’t take effect for a month. Ms. Sheinbaum said that the social media companies “were in agreement” during meetings with the government but asked for time to adjust their platforms.
She also warned tech companies.
“We will be monitoring the situation,” said Ms. Sheinbaum, whose political party also controls the judiciary and legislature. “If it is not complied with, then we move to the next step, which is no longer just a presidential decree but a law. And if there is a law, then sanctions would follow.”
Several of the social media companies named by the government — Meta, Google, TikTok, X and Apple — did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday. Microsoft declined to comment.
Governments worldwide are clamping down on tech companies in hopes of shielding children from social media’s potential harms. Australia, Britain and France have adopted age verification laws as have several U.S. states.
Tech companies are challenging the state laws in court, arguing that they infringe on free speech rights. But some other countries do not have the same speech protections as the United States.
In late August, Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, reached a landmark settlement with 47 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories, agreeing to pay up to $17.1 billion in penalties and make major changes to its products over claims that they endangered children.
In Mexico, some legislators have been considering how to regulate children’s access to social media. Last month, the government restricted cellphones and screens in the country’s educational system.
Ms. Sheinbaum has said that the new decree is a response to an attack earlier this month at a secondary school in northern Mexico — rare in the country — in which two brothers who were former students killed an assistant principal and injured others. On Wednesday, she also recounted another incident in which a child told a teacher that another student had talked of bringing a gun to the school. With a judge’s order, Ms. Sheinbaum said, the authorities found a pistol in the child’s home.
“In this instance,” she said, “as in other cases we have seen in Mexico, it was shown that the young people involved were communicating through digital platforms.”
José Merino, who serves in Ms. Sheinbaum’s cabinet as the head of Mexico’s digital transformation and telecommunications agency, said at a news conference last week that the decree would target publicly accessible content and its quick removal. The platforms, he said, have algorithms that identify high-risk content and risky behavior. “It’s something they already do on a routine basis.”
A legal adviser to Ms. Sheinbaum, Luisa María Alcalde, said Wednesday that the decree was based on an existing law guaranteeing Mexican children “safe access” to the internet but forbidding “cyberbullying and all forms of violence.”
She said that the government had held two meetings with tech company representatives and that they did not resist. They “fully understood the need,” she said.
But some digital rights experts have raised concerns about the government’s approach.
Vladimir Chorny, a researcher and legal expert with R3D, a Mexican digital rights group, said that the children’s law the government cited punished infractions but did not allow for censorship. The Mexican Constitution, he said, prohibits that. A judicial order is needed, he said, to remove content relating to child sexual abuse or incitement of violence.
Mr. Chorny said a better route would be to pass a law, after public debate, requiring social media companies to be more transparent about their algorithms and hold them accountable for their actions.
“We have to arrive at that answer collectively,” he said. “It’s not a decision to be made in a closed-door meeting, nor is it something that can simply be decreed.”
He said: “I believe the only way to truly protect children and adolescents is by strengthening their autonomy so they can distinguish which content affects them and which doesn’t. And the only way to achieve that is by tackling the addictive designs and business models of major platforms that exploit them for economic gain.”
Cecilia Kang contributed reporting,
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