Japan Eyes Penalties for Social Media over Child Safety

Tokyo, July 30 (Jiji Press)–An advisory panel at Japan’s Children and Families Agency on Thursday highlighted the need to consider imposing penalties on social media operators if measures to ensure the safe use of their services by children are found to be insufficient. Social media operators need to assess risks posed by their services to children and strengthen safety measures based on those assessments, the panel said in an interim report. The panel plans to wrap up its final report by the end of this year, as the agency is preparing for law revisions during next year’s ordinary session of the Diet, the country’s parliament. The current law on safe internet use by children focuses on restricting them from accessing harmful content. The panel’s discussions come amid a rise in cases of children being involved in illegal part-time jobs and becoming victims of sexual offenses and consumer scams through social media and online games. As the risks surrounding children on social media become more complex, the panel’s report argued that social media operators should bear due responsibility and called for the establishment of a framework to continuously update their safety measures. The panel also sought to strengthen age-verification methods that do not rely on user self-declaration, including through the use of the My Number personal identification card. The interim report said the panel will continue discussions on the advisability of blanket age restrictions, given views that online spaces can serve as an important place for some children to belong to. The report also said some social media service features, such as algorithm-based recommendation functions and infinite scroll functions, could encourage longer use of such services. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]