Pakistan Telecommunication Authority lacks power to ban social media for minors

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has informed the Islamabad High Court that it lacks the legal mandate to ban children under 16 from social media or to enforce mandatory age verification. In a report submitted regarding a petition aimed at protecting minors from cyberbullying and online harassment, the regulator stated that existing laws, such as the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) 2016, only allow for the blocking of unlawful content rather than setting minimum age requirements.

The PTA noted that implementing universal age verification would require a new legal and regulatory framework to manage identity information, privacy, and platform compliance. The authority also highlighted the transition toward a new Social Media Protection and Regulatory Authority (SMPRA) under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes (Amendment) Act 2025. Until SMPRA is formally notified, the PTA continues to operate under its current framework.

Technical challenges were also cited, including the difficulty of regulating over-the-top (OTT) platforms like Google, Facebook, and X, which are not licensed by the PTA. The authority mentioned that HTTPS encryption complicates the blocking of specific URLs without disrupting entire websites. To date, the PTA has processed over 17 million URLs, blocking approximately 88.20 percent of them.