PH Pediatric Society Recommends No SocMed Under 16

On June 27, the Philippine Pediatric Society, Inc. (PPS) released a position paper on social media use in children and adolescents. Here are the important points parents need to know:

“The PPS does not recommend social media use among children aged 16 years and below.” It states the critical neurodevelopmental stage as one of its main reasons, including the ongoing maturation of a child’s impulse control, emotional regulation, judgment, and social functioning.

While age is not the only factor parents can use to determine readiness for social media, the society recommends considering 16 years old as a “population-level protective threshold” consistent with other international policies. Smart Parenting has been reporting on these movements worldwide. Some countries that have enforced similar age thresholds are: Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Portugal, while the UK, Canada, Spain, Germany, France, Greece, Denmark, and Norway are at proposal stages, like the Philippines.

“PPS also affirms that adolescents have evolving capacities and legitimate interests in communication, learning, social participation, identity exploration, and civic expression,” the paper states. Rather than viewing the paper as “excluding young people from digital life”, it is to ensure safe and supported social media usage for the youth.

PPS reminds parents and guardians to actively supervise, set clear boundaries, and provide age-appropriate guidance, especially for youth with developmental and psychosocial vulnerabilities.

According to the position paper, parents and guardians “are best positioned to assess each child's developmental readiness and to tailor access, supervision, and safeguards to the child's individual needs, capacities, and context.” Schools are recommended to offer support through “digital literacy, healthy digital habits, and age-appropriate guidance for students and families”. Schools should help develop: critical thinking, online safety awareness, respectful digital behavior, and responsible technology use.

Parents, guardians, schools, and the government share the responsibility of keeping Filipino kids safe online. “This responsibility should also be shouldered by healthcare workers through proper counseling and family education, and by tech companies and creators through appropriate platform design that would prevent harmful access, design risk, and exploitative engagement practices at the system level.”

This means requiring platforms to “avoid, restrict, or disable features and algorithmic practices that capitalize on children's developmental vulnerabilities. This includes features that drive compulsive use, prolong engagement, disrupt sleep, or increase exposure to harmful or age-inappropriate content, regardless of commercial intent.

In the recent landmark trial against social media companies in the US, plaintiffs argued that Meta’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube actively sought to hook kids into using their platforms. Read more about it here.

PPS urges pediatricians to incorporate questions about digital media use at every well-child visit. It reminds pediatricians of their role as advocates and encourages them to equip themselves to screen for “problematic or harmful patterns of social media use”.

In 2024, Smart Parenting launched the Smart Parenting Guide to Digital Parenting to meet the Filipino family's need for expert-backed, evidence-based guidance and reporting on raising children in the digital age. We've published longreads on why Filipinos need a guide for parenting kids in the face of digital advancements, imagining a Philippines with a social media ban for minors, and have continuously reported on cyberbullying. Keep visiting and following Smart Parenting to stay up to date.