Jakarta (ANTARA) – Indonesia has removed approximately five million underage accounts from digital platforms under the Government Regulation on Electronic System Governance for Child Protection, locally known as PP Tunas, Communication and Digital Affairs Minister Meutya Hafid announced.
Speaking at her office in Jakarta on Tuesday (August 4), Meutya noted that this achievement has surpassed the scale of short-video platform TikTok’s underage account reductions in Australia.
“Together with the platforms, we have reduced five million child accounts. Although five million users is still small compared to our target, in global terms, this has surpassed what TikTok achieved in Australia,” she said.
Meutya explained that Indonesia adopts a risk-based approach to digital child protection rather than relying on total age bans like those implemented in Australia.
Under PP Tunas, children under 16 years of age are restricted specifically from accessing platforms categorized as high-risk.
“Australia implements a total ban, whereas we conduct a risk assessment. What we prohibit for children under 16 is access to high-risk platforms,” Meutya noted.
The risk-based criteria evaluate features such as direct messaging, exposure to inappropriate material, addictive design patterns, mental health impacts, data privacy safeguards, and commercial profiling.
The regulation aims to push tech firms to modify their services for the Indonesian market.
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Gaming platform Roblox, for instance, has disabled its chat feature by default for Indonesian users under 16, requiring parental consent to reactivate the feature.
“We hope that going forward, it will not just be a ban on children creating accounts, but a broader movement encouraging platforms to transform,” Meutya said.
However, the minister acknowledged that the policy’s execution still faces hurdles, particularly regarding standard age verification technology.
Meutya noted that tech companies have yet to deploy industry-leading verification standards, such as age inference algorithms, facial verification, or behavioral analysis.
“Not all platforms have provided evidence that they have adopted the best technology for age verification, which we believe could be implemented if they invested,” she said.
Under the current setup, companies submit self-assessments detailing their risk profiles. To date, the Communication and Digital Affairs Ministry has processed submissions from 200 platforms across 79 Electronic System Providers (PSEs), with eight platforms self-identifying as high-risk.
Meutya compared the self-assessment framework to media content ratings, expressing optimism that voluntary risk declarations will foster transparency and strengthen child safety in the digital space.
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Translator: Farhan Arda Nugraha, Yashinta Difa
Editor: Rahmad Nasution
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