Japan declines to join movement to ban youth from social media

For context, Japanese mobile lines for children include net filtering by default. Also, mobile lines require positive ID to get, so you can't simply get a burner mobile line. A phone number that can send or receive phone calls or SMS is tied to a real world identity, and transferring is illegal.

So, a neat way of requiring ID checks is to simply offload these things to carriers with phone number validation.

In contrast, the US is an example of a country where getting a phone number with no stringent ID check is trivial and it can easily do SMS and phone calls without a second glance.

*ID verification was recently tightened to require reading the IC card data from My Number Card (the national identity card) or in-person KYC for non-IC card users (like a copy of family registry).

Australia just banned social media for under 16s. Living here, the conversation feels very real.