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Spain will join the growing list of countries banning access to social media for children, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced Tuesday. The law will apply to users under 16 years of age amidst a broader push to hold social media companies accountable for hate speech, social division and illegal content.
Speaking at the World Governments Summit in Dubai, Prime Minister Sanchez excoriated social media, calling it a "failed state" where "laws are ignored and crime is endured." He spoke to the importance of digital governance for these platforms, highlighting recent incidents like X's AI chatbot Grok generating sexualized images of children, Meta "spying" on Android users and the myriad election interference campaigns that have taken place on Facebook.
In light of what Sanchez called the "integral" role social media plays in the lives of young users, he said the best way to help them is to "take back control." Next week, his government will enact a slew of new regulations, with a ban on users under 16 years of age among them. Social media companies will be required to implement what he calls "effective age verification systems" and "not just checkboxes." A specific timeline on enforcement of the coming ban has not been announced.
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 We are still waiting for the iOS 26.3 Release Candidate to come out, so the first iOS 26.4 beta is likely still at least a week or two away. Following beta testing, iOS 26.4 will likely be released to the general public in March or April.
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Elon Musk's lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI, filed last week in California state court, accuses the defendants of forgetting core parts of OpenAI's stated mission to develop useful and non-harmful artificial general intelligence. Altman has since moved to buttress his responsible AI credentials, including the signing of an open letter pledging to develop AI "to improve people's lives."
Critics, however, remain unconvinced by Altman's show of responsibility. Ever since the rapid popularization of generative AI (genAI) over the past year, those critics have been warning that the consequences of unfettered and unregulated AI development could be not just corrosive to human society, but a threat to it entirely.
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