In December 2025, Australia prohibited anyone under the age of sixteen from having accounts on certain social networks. In July, the French Parliament approved a measure to bar them for those under fifteen, though the Constitutional Council overturned that move in August, and in September the European Commission proposed restricting access before thirteen across the Union. Spain processed in Congress a bill for the protection of minors in digital environments. And the controversy is once again in public debate following the publication of a study showing how pedophile networks might be operating on TikTok. Finally, in Argentina a proposal for a “digital majority” at fifteen has just been introduced.
Behind these measures lies a silent, but enormous, acknowledgment: the digital environment socializes children; it teaches them to navigate the world in a way different from what we knew. That is why states are beginning to treat platforms as what they are — agents of socialization — and not merely tools. Yet when something goes wrong, the gaze remains fixed on one side: the family, turned into a scapegoat. Family accountability operates as a default narrative: it is convenient, because it offers a visible and nearby culprit. But it is, at the same time, empirically inaccurate and socially unjust.
“The family accountability functions as a default narrative: it is convenient, because it offers a visible and near-at-hand scapegoat”
For decades, an order was assumed. First the family socializes (primary socialization); then school continues the task (secondary socialization). The digital culture broke that sequence. We could speak of a Trojan socialization: like the horse that Troy let within its walls — and like the computer “Trojan” that bears its name — it enters the home by invitation and operates from inside, shaping the child without anyone having designated it for that task. Today, children access screens, formats, and consumption logics before the family finishes forming its habits, and long before stepping into a classroom. It’s not just about screen time, but about an environment that models desires, bonds, and expectations of recognition. That environment was not designed by any mother or father: it was shaped by platforms, by the market, and, through action or omission, by the States themselves.
When a child is found to have a problematic screen consumption, the question almost always lands on the same thing: what did the responsible adults do wrong? Yet, the question misses the point, because it attributes to the family the architecture of a process they do not control. No family negotiated the algorithms that capture their children’s attention, nor the design strategies that make certain apps addictive — the same design behind which Meta closed a multimillion-dollar settlement in 2026 —, nor the lack of regulation that allowed all of this to reach childhood unfiltered. Asking a family to control that environment is like asking them to order the weather.
And it is unjust because it singles out a single actor for a phenomenon that is social in scope. Digital culture does not enter only a few homes: it crosses everyone equally. Turning each family into the only accused transforms a collective and transversal condition into an individual fault. And when that labeling becomes intervention, it tends to fall most heavily on the most exposed families — the poorest, single-parent households, or those already under state scrutiny — not because the problem is theirs, but because they are the easiest to observe.
“Turning each family into the sole accused transforms a collective and cross-cutting condition into an individual fault”
Nuancing accountability does not mean exonerating families. Adults have an indispensable role in guiding children. It means distributed responsibility among its real coauthors, and not in equal parts: ordinary parents do not shoulder the same burden as big tech. If digital culture is a preceding and parallel agent of socialization, then the platforms that produce it, the market that funds it, and the State that regulates it — or not — are co-responsible for its effects. This is not a position held in isolation: Spain’s Minister of Youth and Childhood, Sira Rego, has stated that her government seeks to “place the responsibility where it belongs”: on the major platforms, not on families. Carrying all the weight on the weakest link in the chain is, besides being unfair, ineffective: it does not solve the problem, it merely finds a scapegoat.
Moreover, it is wise not to replace one excess with another: psychologists like Peter Gray warn that excessive adult control — and the loss of free play and autonomy — also harms childhood. If the only answer is more surveillance of kids and their families, one harm would be added to another. Neuroscience also does not close the debate: evidence about screens and the developing brain remains fragmented.
Australian-style prohibitions are interesting because, for the first time, they shift responsibility upward: they compel platforms, not families. Not all proposals move in that direction: the Argentine “digital majority” project again puts the key in the hands of parents, because under fifteen access would depend on family consent. And it is wise not to fool oneself. Television already experimented with an obligatory blocking chip — the U.S. V-chip of 1996 —; almost no one used it, and the problem was not solved by placing control in every home. Three months after the prohibition, the Australian regulator (eSafety) found that more than 80% of 10- to 15-year-olds surveyed were still using at least one network, and about half of those who kept their account said the platform had never verified their age. No prohibition substitutes for a comprehensive policy. And none will be fair if, behind the doors of the courts, the old narrative that makes every family the sole accused continues to operate.
“No prohibition substitutes for a comprehensive policy. And none will be fair if, behind the doors of the courts, the old narrative that makes every family the sole accused continues to operate”
The debate opening across the Spanish-speaking world —from Madrid to Buenos Aires— is an opportunity to correct the focus. The question should not be only how to achieve that families control screens, but how to fairly distribute responsibility for an environment that socializes our children before us. From that answer depends not only the effectiveness of the new laws, but the fairness of thousands of judicial and social interventions that, each day and by name, decide the lives of girls, boys, and their families.
