Vietnam Considers Muting Kids on Social Media Instead of Banning Them Outright

A different kind of ban

Vietnam isn't kicking kids off social media. It's muting them.

According to Reuters, a draft decree from Vietnam's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism would let users under 16 keep their Facebook, TikTok, and other accounts. What they'd lose is the ability to post, comment, or react to anything. Scroll all you want. Speak up, and you're locked out.

The accounts would have to be registered under a parent, who becomes the designated adult in charge of monitoring what the kid sees and how long they're on the app. Platforms would be required to build technical tools to identify which users are minors and route them into some kind of age-appropriate lane.

Deputy Culture Minister Phan Tam said the goal "isn't to ban or excessively restrict children's access to social media, but to ensure they're in an age-appropriate environment when they do use it," according to Reuters. The decree hasn't been finalized. Vietnam is also floating a cap on gaming for under-16 users: 60 minutes a day, per game, with the same parental registration scheme.

Australia went first, and went further

Vietnam's plan is unusual, but it's not happening in a vacuum. Australia became the first country to fully ban social media for children under 16, implementing the law at the end of 2025, according to TechCrunch. That ban covers Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X, YouTube, Reddit, Twitch, and Kick. WhatsApp and YouTube Kids are carved out.

Companies that don't comply face fines up to $49.5 million AUD, roughly $34.4 million USD, TechCrunch reported. Australian regulators have told platforms to use multiple verification methods to confirm ages, not just a birthdate typed into a signup box that any 10-year-old can lie about.

France has also moved on its own version of restrictions, TechCrunch noted, joining a growing list of governments treating this as a policy priority rather than a fringe idea.

The case for doing something

The reasoning behind all of this isn't hard to follow. Cyberbullying, addiction, exposure to predators, and a mental health crisis among teenagers that shows up in pediatric data year after year. Parents across the political spectrum have been asking for years why tech companies get a pass on protecting kids that no other industry would get.

This isn't a partisan instinct. Conservative parents' groups have pushed age verification and parental consent requirements in U.S. states. Progressive public health advocates have pushed the same thing framed around mental health. Both sides landed on roughly the same policy demand from different directions: get platforms to actually verify who's using them and give parents real tools, not just settings menus buried five clicks deep.

The case against it

The strongest pushback isn't that kids should have unlimited internet freedom. It's that age verification requires collecting sensitive data, ID scans, biometric checks, government documents on systems that get hacked constantly. Amnesty Tech has argued these bans are ineffective and ignore how younger generations actually use technology, according to TechCrunch. Critics worry that a database of every teenager's face or ID number sitting on a platform's servers is a bigger long-term risk than the problem it's solving.

There's also the enforcement question nobody has answered well. Vietnam's plan puts parents in charge of monitoring content and screen time. That assumes parents have the time, the tech literacy, and the will to actually do it. Plenty won't, the same way plenty of households never enforced ratings on video games or R-rated movies. A rule that depends entirely on parental follow-through isn't much of a rule.

Platforms building tools to detect which users are minors means platforms building better tools to identify everyone, adults included. That's a real privacy tradeoff, not a hypothetical one.

What happens next

Vietnam's decree is still a draft. Reuters reported it hasn't been finalized and could change before adoption. There's no timeline yet for a final vote or implementation date.

The open question is whether age-verification technology can actually work at scale without turning into a surveillance system that outlives the policy problem it was built to solve. Australia's under-16 ban, now in effect for several months, will be the test case other governments watch most closely, since it's the first full implementation rather than a proposal on paper.