The Brazilian Government had drafted a new decree aimed at ensuring that minors did not have access to online gambling, pornography and other dangerous content in the country. This was followed by a number of restrictions announced in 2025, marking Brazil ‘ s participation in an international campaign to revisit the interaction between children and adolescents and digital platforms.
According to the draft decree, the app store will implement strict age verification measures to prevent minors from being exposed to inappropriate or illegal content. In addition, the hosting of gaming sites, pornographic content, accompanying services, alcohol, dating sites and related advertising sites, such as weapons, must verify the age of users before allowing them to access such content. According to the Brazilian Globe, the Government, under the leadership of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, plans to promulgate the decree by the end of February as part of the implementation of the new law, which will enter into force in March. This legislation aims to protect minors by requiring companies and platforms to restrict their access to illegal and harmful content. It is noteworthy that Brazilian legislation does not follow Australia ‘ s recent extreme policy of prohibiting young people from using social media such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
In Brazil, social media personal data for persons under 16 years of age are linked to legal guardians. As a result, Brazil is one of the most recent countries to take far-reaching measures against cyberinjury, exploitation and other dangerous content. The proposed act does not allow for the use of age information entered by users themselves and contains provisions for the Government to open an official age validation mechanism. The proposal provides protection for data collected during the process to address privacy concerns – This is precisely the critical aspect of similar proposals by Australia and others. According to the draft project, the new provisions will ensure that identity information, browsing history or authentication requests cannot be traced. It is worth noting that other countries may follow such paths in the near future. Spain, for example, had recently announced a plan to ban the use of social media by adolescents. Currently, at least 10 other European countries, with the exception of the EU, are considering measures to limit the exposure of young users to harmful cyber environments.
Over the past few years, Brazil has shown a bolder stance in the regulation of social media, especially in the area of combating false information, often leading to conflict between the Government and the technological giants. The Federal Government of Brazil had planned to promote new regulatory rules after the events of 8 January 2023. However, opposition parliamentarians blocked parliamentary discussions on the grounds that the initiative might lead to a review. Meanwhile, last year the Supreme Court ruled in favour of further regulation of social media and held the “tech giant” responsible for the illegal content published on its platform. In addition, another piece of legislation on the misuse of artificial intelligence is pending in Congress. There are indications that the Brazilian digital law is entering a completely new phase.