Costa Rican lawmakers moved forward Tuesday with a bill that would sharply limit minors’ access to social media, after the Legislative Assembly’s Youth, Children and Adolescents Committee unanimously approved bill 25,336 and sent it on to the full Assembly for debate and a vote. The proposal would ban children under 14 from creating or using accounts on social media platforms with social interaction features.
Under the bill, children younger than 14 would only be allowed to use certified child-focused services or versions specifically built for minors. Those services would have to include active parental controls and disable addictive features by default. The proposal also would ban personalized advertising based on minors’ data.
For teenagers between 14 and 18, the measure stops short of a full ban but sets stricter rules. Platforms would be allowed to use several methods to determine if a user is underage, including third-party verification, digital credentials or age estimation. At a minimum, minors opening personal accounts would have to provide Costa Rica’s minor ID card, known as the TIM, and platforms would need express, verifiable permission from a parent or legal guardian. The bill also says minors could not register non-personal accounts, pages or communities.
The proposal also targets platform design. For accounts belonging to users under 18, companies would have to disable features tied to compulsive use, including infinite scroll, autoplay, pull-to-refresh and dark-pattern design. The text also calls for tighter limits on recommendation systems driven only by engagement, tools for time limits and breaks, parental supervision dashboards, and stronger detection of grooming and sexual or violent content aimed at minors.
Responsibility for enforcing the law would not fall only on tech companies. The bill places obligations on parents, guardians, the Ministry of Science, Innovation, Technology and Telecommunications, and Costa Rica’s telecom regulator SUTEL. SUTEL would oversee sanctions against platforms that fail to comply.
Penalties in the bill range from 15 to 50 base salaries, with repeat violations punished by fines of 30 to 50 base salaries. The text also allows for additional corrective measures, including orders to stop certain operations, redesign platform features for minors, suspend functions tied to underage accounts, publish the sanction and carry out remediation plans.
The bill was introduced by lawmaker MarÃa Marta Carballo and is framed as a child protection measure aimed at reducing exposure to risks such as cyberbullying, grooming, addiction and harmful content. Tuesday’s committee vote does not make it law, but it puts the proposal a step closer to becoming one of Costa Rica’s most aggressive attempts yet to regulate how children and teenagers use digital platforms.
