(Al Jazeera Media Network) As the mother of an 18-month-old daughter, Laila Lubis is busy experiencing the challenges and joys of new motherhood.
Though her daughter only recently uttered her first words, Lubis is already thinking about how the internet and social media could shape her development long into the future.
“I will never give a mobile phone to my child,” Lubis, who works as a humanitarian worker in Mandailing Natal, North Sumatra, told Al Jazeera.
“I will not allow my daughter to use a mobile phone for as long as I can. Maybe when my child is around six years old, I will think about homeschooling her for kindergarten, so she will have to have access to the internet for that.”
Across Indonesia, countless families are having similar discussions among themselves as the government prepares to introduce a minimum age for using social media.
Minister of Communication and Digital Affairs Meutya Hafid first floated the plans last month, as part of an effort to boost child protection policies in the archipelago of some 280 million people.
Though the government has yet to announce a specific age limit, officials have stressed the need for stronger regulation to protect minors from “physical, mental, or moral perils”.
Indonesia’s bid comes on the heels of a similar effort in neighbouring Australia, which in November became the first country to introduce a ban on under-16s from accessing social media.
Under Australian legislation, social media platforms such as Facebook, TikTok and Instagram face fines of up to $32 million if they fail to enforce the age requirements.
In advance of the introduction of its law, Jakarta has announced its intention to impose interim child protection guidelines on social media companies while the government drafts legislation.
Lubis said while the ban has yet to come to fruition, she believes it is positive that the government has kickstarted discussion about keeping children safe online.
“I believe that there are more negatives rather than positives for children using social media and the internet, especially very young children,” she said.
The potential ban is the latest in a series of efforts by the Indonesian government to rein in Big Tech firms.
In October, Indonesian authorities banned sales of Apple’s iPhone 16 and the Google Pixel over the companies’ failure to comply with regulations mandating that smartphones source at least 40 percent of their parts locally.
In 2022, the government threatened to block Google, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram if they did not register with the Ministry of Communication, though the companies were spared from the ban after signing up before the deadline.
Authorities also blocked popular streaming platform Netflix from 2016 to 2020 amid fears that it promoted “inappropriate content”, including pornography, and briefly blocked video-sharing platform TikTok in 2018.
While Australia’s legislation broke new ground, Indonesia’s potential ban would affect far more people.
About 139 million Indonesians use social media and almost half of children below the age of 12 access platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, according to the Indonesia Internet Service Provider Association.
Priyandita said Gen Z users aged 12 to 27 have the highest internet usage rate in Indonesia, at 87 percent, with most of them active on TikTok and Instagram – both of which boast more than 110 million users in the country.
“Gen Alpha [people born after 2010] are likely to be highly proactive users of social media as well. Their departure from these platforms will mean that social media may be set to lose huge numbers of followers,” he said.
