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.

The threshold and the bill

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.

The European tool behind the decision

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.

What it means in practice

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.