SENATOR Joel Villanueva is calling on the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC) to include his bill seeking to protect children from harmful social media platforms among the administration’s priority measures, as the Senate confronts a renewed reckoning over child safety following the deadly shooting at a Tacloban high school last week.
In a statement, Villanueva said the tragedy underscores the need for a comprehensive approach to protecting children both in school and online. While investigators continue to examine the circumstances behind the attack, including possible exposure to harmful online content, the Senator said his bill addresses a different but related front in that effort: the unregulated digital spaces where children spend much of their time outside school.
Senate Bill No. 2071, or the “Safe Media Access and Responsible Technology for Kids in Digital Spaces (SMART KIDS) Act,” would bar children below 15 years old from creating or maintaining accounts on social media platforms and other covered digital services, with enforcement directed exclusively at platform operators.
Villanueva noted that the measure complements bills already prioritized by the LEDAC, including amendments to the Anti-Online Sexual Abuse or Exploitation of Children (OSAEC) and Anti-Child Sexual Abuse or Exploitation Materials (CSAEM) Act. He said the SMART KIDS Act fills a related but distinct gap by regulating platform design and account access, rather than content alone.
“This bill is anchored on a simple but vital principle: those who shape the digital environment must also be responsible for making it safe,” Villanueva added.
Villanueva said current platform design has made children especially vulnerable. “Features such as algorithm-driven feeds, infinite scrolling, and auto-play are deliberately structured to capture attention and prolong usage,” he said in the bill’s explanatory note. “In this environment, those most vulnerable are those least equipped to navigate these risks.”
He emphasized that the measure deliberately avoids punishing children for being online. “Rather than penalizing young users, the measure ensures that those who design, operate, and profit from digital platforms are held accountable for maintaining a safe environment,” he said.
Under the bill, covered platforms include social networking sites, content-sharing platforms, messaging apps with social features, and any service built around algorithmic feeds. Operators must implement age-assurance mechanisms, content moderation systems, safety-by-design features, and continuous risk assessment processes to detect and remove underage accounts. They must also submit annual transparency reports to the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT).
The bill imposes strict data privacy safeguards on age checks, prohibiting platforms from requiring government-issued IDs or building centralized identity databases. Penalties for non-compliant platforms range from ?1 million to ?20 million in administrative fines, while repeated or grossly negligent violations may result in fines of up to ?50 million and possible suspension of operations. No criminal, civil, or administrative liability attaches to the children themselves.
The measure also requires schools to designate an Online Safety Coordinator from existing personnel to handle digital safety concerns, without creating new positions for the role.
Three students were killed and more than a dozen others wounded on June 22 when two minors, aged 14 and 15, opened fire inside San Jose National High School in Tacloban City. Investigators have since said the attack appears to have been premeditated, and police are looking into whether one suspect’s behavior was influenced by GoreBox, a violent sandbox-style online game that the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center has since temporarily banned. Authorities are also probing an earlier account that the attack may have stemmed from a bullying grudge.
