Norway retargets its under-16 social media law at harmful platforms, games included
The government will write a risk-of-harm test into the coming age-limit law and drop the broad exemptions for games and messaging services. TikTok, Roblox and Snapchat, as they work today, would all be covered.
OSLO: Norway's coming age-limit law for social media will be aimed at platforms that can harm children, wherever those platforms sit, the government announced on Monday, Oct. 19. Ministers have decided to build a condition of risk of harm into the law and to remove a series of exemptions from it, so that games and messaging services with harmful features can be brought inside the limit alongside conventional social media, the government said in its statement.
Under the test the government has adopted, a service counts as a harmful social medium when the way it is designed, the features it offers or the material it carries creates a risk to children's emotional or cognitive development, to their health, or to their safety. The risks the law is meant to reach run from harmful content and design that keeps children hooked, through unlawful marketing aimed at them, to unwanted contact from strangers, and the government says the same test gives companies a reason to strip those features out. Whether a service is harmful will be judged on evidence, with assessments kept current as the technology changes. On the government's reading, TikTok, Roblox and Snapchat, in their present form, will all fall under the law.
The change is a redrawing of the bill rather than a narrowing of it. Without a harm test, ministers had needed blanket exceptions so that ordinary messaging tools, including apps schools use to talk to pupils, and harmless games that matter a great deal to young players stayed outside the law. With the test in place, those exceptions can go, and services will be sorted by what they do to children instead of by what they call themselves. The Norwegian Media Authority welcomed the approach the same day, arguing that the starting point for regulation has to be whether a service can harm children, and pointing to addictive mechanisms, pressure to buy and the risk of contact with strangers on game platforms and other services that increasingly resemble social media.
The regulator's own research shows why games are in the frame. Its Children and Media 2026 survey found that 81 percent of Norwegian children aged nine to 12 use Roblox, and the authority will publish a dedicated report on the platform, titled Roblox under radaren, on Thursday, Oct. 22, at its gaming conference. The age limit itself is unchanged from the framework the government set out in April: it applies until Jan. 1 of the year a child turns 16, so a whole school cohort crosses the line together and every pupil is at least 15 when access opens. Vågslid explained the cohort rule in April by saying: "We want to ensure inclusion and a sense of community."
Enforcement will run through the Digital Services Act, whose sanctions and enforcement duties the national age-limit law activates, and the government says getting the digital services law in place quickly is a high priority. Companies, not children or parents, carry the duty to check ages: providers must offer age verification that actually works, respects privacy and meets the conditions of the European data protection rules, and ministers expect compliance from the first day. The proposal has already been consulted on in Norway and in the European Economic Area, and the government still plans to lay the bill before the Storting before the end of the year.
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