Age verification for social media users starts June 1

Teo (fifth right) with other distinguihed guests and safe internet heroes at the Kuching district-level Safe Internet Campaign (KIS) Carnival 2026 held at Tropics City on May 22, 2026.

By Dayangku Hidayatul

KUCHING, May 22: The Malaysia Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) has introduced two new codes prohibiting children under 16 from registering social media accounts by requiring government-issued documents to be uploaded for age verification.

Education Minister Teo Nie Ching said the new Child Protection Code (CPC) and Risk Mitigation Code (RMC), introduced under the Online Safety Act (ONSA), place responsibility on platforms to better safeguard children’s welfare online, which will be effective June 1.

“As announced earlier, the Cabinet has decided that children under the age of 16 are not allowed to open or register social media accounts.

“When we talk about social media accounts, this involves platforms with more than eight million users in Malaysia, such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.

“These platforms have already become licensees under the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 since early this year. Therefore, the codes published by MCMC are binding,” she told reporters after officiating at the Kuching district-level Safe Internet Campaign (KIS) Carnival 2026 held at Tropics City here today.

Teo explained that the CPC and RMC were introduced after several engagement sessions with stakeholders, civil society groups and industry players.

Under the codes, platforms are expected to verify users’ ages using official government-issued documents such as identity cards and passports.

Teo said self-declaration of age is no longer sufficient, noting that MCMC will grant platforms a reasonable timeframe to conduct individual age verification for existing accounts.

“There will be no punishment or fines against parents if children below 16 have social media accounts. Under the CPC, the responsibility is on the platform providers to take reasonable steps to ensure their users are above 16 years old,” she added.

However, she advised parents to exercise proper judgment before allowing children to use their documents to register accounts.

Teo added that any platform found violating the codes could face penalties of up to RM10 million under the Online Safety Act.

She also said MCMC and the platforms will discuss whether unverified accounts should be terminated or assessed further using artificial intelligence (AI) systems.

Meanwhile, in a statement, the MCMC said that under the CPC, platform providers are required to apply safety by design, including restricting under-16 account registration and ownership, introducing age-appropriate protections, and limiting certain functions that could expose children to risk, thereby reducing exposure to exploitative and harmful content.

As for the RMC, it requires service providers to implement proactive and comprehensive measures to mitigate the risk of harmful content.

These include risk assessments, stronger content governance, effective reporting and response mechanisms, advertiser verification measures and labelling of manipulated content. — DayakDaily