Pakistan moves to set a minimum age for social media and ban obscene vlogs

The federal government has decided to tighten the law on social media, and two things are on the table: a minimum age for holding an account, and restrictions on obscene content pushed through vlogging channels. The proposals were prepared by the Ministry of Interior.

No age has been fixed yet. That is the single most important thing to understand about the reports circulating on Thursday: a decision to legislate is not a law, and the number that will matter to parents and to teenagers has not been chosen.

Who is in the room

The Interior Ministry will consult federal and provincial authorities, provincial police departments, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) and the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) before finalising recommendations. Officials also plan to review reports from provincial police on child exploitation and obscenity cases, and to study how other countries have done it, with Australia named as the model being examined most closely.

Australia's law bars under-16s from holding accounts on named platforms and puts the compliance burden on the platform, not the parent or the child. The United Kingdom's approach leans instead on age assurance and duties of care. The two produce very different enforcement problems, which is why the choice of model matters more than the age itself.

Punjab has already voted for 16

This is not starting from nothing. On 1 September 2026 the Punjab Assembly passed a resolution moved by MPA Sarah Ahmad calling for a legal bar on children under 16 creating or keeping social media accounts without verified parental consent, federal legislation mandating age verification across platforms, and a PTA role in building and enforcing the verification system.

A provincial resolution is not binding on the federation. But it puts 16 on the table as the number the eventual federal bill will be measured against.

Family vlogging is in scope

Alongside the age question, the ministry is looking at measures against the misuse of family vlogging, a format that has grown fast on Pakistani YouTube and TikTok and that puts identifiable children in monetised content daily. A possible ban on certain platforms is also listed among the options under consideration, though no platform has been named.

What this would mean in practice

Any real age rule needs age verification, and age verification in Pakistan runs into a simple problem: most teenagers do not have a CNIC. Verification would either fall back on the parent's CNIC and mobile number, or on the biometric SIM record the PTA already holds, and both approaches drag the whole adult population into proving their identity to foreign platforms.

That is the fight to watch. The age number will be argued about in public; the verification mechanism is where the privacy cost sits. If the SIM database becomes the check, every account holder's identity is linked to their social media presence by default.

Timeline

There is none yet. A ministry meeting will decide the next course of action, and the government says final decisions follow stakeholder consultation. Nothing changes for any user today. If you want to see which SIMs are already tied to your CNIC in that database, our guide on how to check SIMs registered on your CNIC walks through the 668 SMS service.