Christodoulides government introduces age verification framework to protect minors online, based on European age verification system to ensure privacy The post Ban on social media for children under 15 years old in Cyprus, and how to verify the age appeared first on ProtoThema English.The Republic of Cyprus is moving ahead with a regulation that sets a minimum age of 15 for creating and maintaining an account on social media platforms, with the government linking the measure to the protection of children in the digital environment. According to what was posted by President Nikos Christodoulides, the proposal will be incorporated into the national “Digital Citizen” application later this year. According to the government’s direction, the bill will define the scope of application, the age verification requirement, the penalties in case of non-compliance, and the necessary transitional provisions. The essence is that it will not just remain a general political announcement, but will attempt to obtain a clear legal and technical framework. Nicosia builds on the European technical proposal for age verification on the internet. The European Commission has already made available from July 2025 a common European age verification standard, designed to allow users to prove that they belong to a certain age category without revealing more personal data than they need. This system has been presented as a privacy-preserving solution that is compatible with future European digital identity wallets. The practical targeting is twofold. On the one hand, to make it more difficult for minors to have uncontrolled access to platforms that foster addiction, exposure to inappropriate content, or digital harassment. On the other hand, to shift some of the responsibility to the platforms themselves, which for years have claimed to protect minors, but in practice are usually content with a box where the child only clicks on what is older. The familiar high level of 21st-century technological delusion. The real test will not be the proclamation but the implementation. That is, whether the verification system will actually work, whether it will respect personal data, and, most importantly, whether platforms will be forced to take it seriously. Otherwise, Cyprus will have legislated something correct in terms of intent, but minors will continue to enter normally with two clicks and a fake date of birth. Follow en.protothema.gr on Google News and be the first to know all the news See all the latest News from Greece and the World, the moment they happen, at en.protothema.gr
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