UAE Cabinet Resolution on Children’s Access to Social Media Platforms

The UAE has taken a significant step in digital child protection, with the UAE Cabinet issuing a resolution regulating children’s access to social media platforms and setting 15 years as the minimum age for social media use in the UAE.

Under the resolution, children under 15 are prohibited from creating, using, or operating personal social media accounts, and they may not access full platform features such as posting, commenting, sharing, joining public groups, open channels, or other large-scale interactive spaces. Importantly, parental consent will not operate as an exemption to these prohibitions or restrictions.

Children aged 15 to 16 may access social media, but only subject to enhanced protective measures on their accounts. These measures include age-appropriate content classification and restriction, disabling high-risk features such as interaction with unknown users, regulating usage time and duration, and providing parental control tools.

For social media platforms, the resolution introduces a clear compliance shift from self-declared age gates to reliable age-verification mechanisms. Platforms must implement effective and reliable age verification, which may include digital identity verification, AI-supported technologies such as biometric tools, or other mechanisms approved by the Child Digital Safety Council. Self-declaration of age will not be accepted as a valid verification method.

Platform obligations go beyond age checks. Social media platforms whose services are available in the UAE, or directed at UAE users, must monitor accounts created by children under 15 in breach of the resolution and take immediate steps to suspend or disable them. Platforms must also take technical and administrative measures to prevent circumvention, refrain from targeting children with personalized advertising based on tracking or behavioural profiling and avoid exploiting or processing children’s personal data for commercial purposes dependent on monitoring their digital activities.

The National Media Authority and the Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority will oversee platform compliance within their respective jurisdictions.

From a legal and compliance perspective, businesses operating digital services in the UAE should begin assessing whether their platforms, onboarding processes, age-verification tools, content controls, advertising practices, parental control features, child-data processing activities, and reporting processes are ready for the new standards. Platforms will have a transitional period of up to 12 months to bring their operations into compliance, in coordination with the competent authorities.

This is not only a child-protection update, but also a wider regulatory signal for the UAE digital economy. Platforms will increasingly be expected to demonstrate that online access for minors is safe, age-appropriate, transparent, privacy-preserving, and enforceable in practice.