Reason for proposal and main contents

The current law lists juvenile protection measures by such methods as marking juvenile-harmful media, prohibiting the advertisement of harmful media, and appointing juvenile protection officers to uphold a certain standard among IT service suppliers.

However, recent cases of foreign legislation have also included efforts to protect juveniles in specific cases, by assigning the responsibility for managing and preventing juveniles’ indiscreet exposure to addictive contents when business entities provide minors with social networking services. 

Therefore, the proposed revision newly establishes definitions of social networking services and algorithms. It prohibits the algorithms to recommend information to users by automated methods in social networking services (hereinafter referred to as “information recommendation algorithms”) for juveniles under 19 years of age in principle. Exceptions are allowed only when protectors including parental authority make the consent. Even in this case, permission of information recommendation algorithms requires additional consent by protectors from midnight to 6:00 am for more protection of juvenile in social networking services (Article 2 (1) 14 and Article 2 (1) 15 and newly established Article 42-4 of the draft).