European Parliament proposal 'could restricts teen access to social media'

The European Parliament may introduce new regulations which would see restrictions placed on the social media use of teenagers under the age of 16.

Lawmakers will vote on this issue on Thursday.

If passed it would mean that young teens would need parental permission to join social media sites.

Silicon Republic editor Elaine Burke said it is questionable as to how companies such as Facebook could police such rules.

"They try and find out if your profile isn't real - like if you're representing a wrong person - and they have shut down profiles for those reasons," she said.

"They have a real name policy that annoys a lot of people because they have to go by their real name on Facebook - so they are checking accounts for activities that are going against what they say they are.

"So they probably could invest some algorithm to track whether you're 13 or 16 - but at the end of the day you could just say: 'Oh well my mam said I could sign up to it'."