{"id":304765,"date":"2026-02-18T19:39:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T19:39:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/304765\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T19:39:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T19:39:10","slug":"government-to-confirm-plans-for-social-media-age-ban-but-critics-call-strategy-half-cocked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/304765\/","title":{"rendered":"Government to confirm plans for social media age ban \u2013 but critics call strategy \u2018half-cocked\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>latest\u00a0|\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">New Digital and AI Strategy being considered todayCampaigner says plans \u2018deeply problematic\u2019 as adults would also have to prove their ageNo plans to ban smartphones for teenagers, Taoiseach says\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris has expressed support for a ban. Photo: Getty\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/71372ec4-eebb-4a59-9877-60ff960ce632.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris has expressed support for a ban. Photo: Getty<\/p>\n<p>C\u00f3nal Thomas and Senan Molony<\/p>\n<p>Today at 13:50<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">The Government will today confirm plans to restrict social media use by under-16s in Ireland.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Ministers today will consider the new Digital and AI Strategy, a draft of which states that introducing age restrictions will be a priority for the European Presidency later this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"latest\u00a0|\u00a0 New Digital and AI Strategy being considered todayCampaigner says plans \u2018deeply problematic\u2019 as adults would also have&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[823,42,542,43,70,6116,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-304765","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-facebook","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-instagram","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-simon-harris","13":"tag-tiktok","14":"tag-top-news","15":"tag-top-stories","16":"tag-topnews","17":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}