Social media age limit in Pakistan: PTA tells IHC it cannot ban under-16s without a law

Updated Thursday 1 October 2026, 10:50pm PKT. The PTA's detailed reply is now before the Islamabad High Court, and it adds numbers and one practical point for parents. The case was filed by Waqas Nasir in August, and the IHC sought responses on 31 August, Dawn reported; the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the Ministry of Interior and the National Commission on the Rights of the Child have also filed replies, according to APP.

• Still no power to set an age limit: the PTA repeated that no law lets it run age verification or bar under-16s, and that platforms such as Facebook, Google and X are "over the top" services not licensed in Pakistan, so it cannot compel them.
• A new regulator is coming: once notified, the Social Media Protection and Regulatory Authority set up under the PECA amendments of 2025 will take over the PTA's social media functions, Dawn reported. Any age rule would most likely sit with it, after Parliament legislates.
• What the PTA says it has blocked: of 1.789 million links reported to it, 1.577 million were blocked (88.2%), APP reported. By platform, the blocking rate was 88.68% on TikTok, 87.34% on YouTube, 79.52% on Instagram, 78.57% on Facebook and 48.42% on X.
• For parents now: the PTA pointed to its toll-free 1121 helpline for reporting child exploitation, and to Instagram's Teen Accounts settings. To report other harmful content, see our guide on how to file a PTA complaint.

Earlier, Wednesday 30 September:

The PTA has told the Islamabad High Court it has no legal power to ban children under 16 from social media, or to make age verification compulsory, ProPakistani reported on Wednesday. The regulator made the statement in its reply to Writ Petition No. 4163 of 2026.

The PTA's argument rests on Section 37 of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016 (PECA), which lets it block or remove unlawful content but says nothing about setting a minimum age or checking users' ages. Without a new law, the authority said, it cannot create:

• a universal age database or mandatory age checks on platforms;
• rules on which verification methods are allowed and who is responsible for them;
• rules on handling identity information, privacy safeguards and compliance audits;
• penalties for platforms that do not comply.

What it can keep doing under the current law: process complaints, review reported content, work with the platforms and block unlawful material. It pointed out that Australia and the European Union set age limits through their own domestic laws.

What this means for parents: nothing changes on any app yet. Any under-16 rule now depends on Parliament passing a law, which is the route the Interior Ministry has been preparing (below). Until then, the tools are the ones already on the phone: each platform's own parental and teen-account settings, and a complaint to the PTA or the NCCIA when a child is harassed or exploited online.

Earlier, 17 September:

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.