Engineering attention
: Korea should consider regulating addictive platform design, not just banning social media

Children have long been blamed for spending too much time with the newest technology. Adults once worried about comic books, television and video games. Social media presents a different challenge because it has been engineered not merely to attract attention, but to keep it.

South Korea's latest proposal deserves support because it recognizes that distinction. Rather than treating teenagers as the problem, policymakers are increasingly examining how the systems are deliberately designed to capture and prolong their attention.

That shift is overdue. Yet it will succeed only if regulation focuses less on banning accounts than on reshaping the digital environment itself.

The proposal unveiled during the Korea Communications Commission's policy briefing on July 16 marks a shift in thinking. Children under 14 would, in principle, be barred from opening social media accounts without parental consent, while users between 14 and 19 would receive greater protection from features such as infinite scrolling, autoplay and personalized recommendation algorithms.

The initiative comes as governments from Australia to Brazil, Indonesia, Britain and the European Union move toward stronger safeguards for minors, driven by mounting evidence that excessive social media use is harming young people's mental health, literacy and online safety.

Korea has ample reason to act as well. Data shows that the proportion of teenagers at risk of smartphone overdependence climbed to a record 43 percent in 2025, while cyberbullying, deepfake abuse and compulsive social media use continue to intensify.

The plan's greatest strength is its recognition that digital addiction is not merely a matter of weak self-control. Teenagers are neurologically more vulnerable to immediate rewards because the brain's impulse-control systems mature later than those associated with emotional response.

Social media companies exploit this mechanism through endless feeds, automatic video playback and algorithms trained to maximize engagement. Regulating these attention-maximizing features can address the very source of the problem more directly than policing individual behavior.

That does not mean account restrictions should be accepted uncritically. Korea has learned before that prohibitions can prove easier to announce than to enforce. The gaming shutdown law, introduced in 2011 and abolished in 2022, became a lesson in regulatory overconfidence, as teenagers bypassed restrictions using their parents' identities or migrated to other platforms.

Australia's pioneering social media ban has encountered similar difficulties. Many young users continue to access services despite age restrictions.

Rules that cannot be effectively enforced often weaken confidence in regulation itself rather than strengthen public protection.

A sounder approach is to make platforms, not teenagers, bear greater responsibility. Effective age verification should become a key obligation rather than a procedural formality. Regulators also have to consider a mix of tools such as default privacy protections for minors, independent audits of recommendation systems and restrictions on engagement-driven features.

Just as important, policymakers should avoid creating a regulatory blind spot by concentrating solely on conventional social media. If addictive platform features disappear while conversational AI companions remain largely unregulated, young users may simply migrate from one persuasive technology to another.

Technology alone cannot solve the problem. Lasting protection depends on judgment that no software can supply. Schools should place renewed emphasis on media literacy, critical thinking and sustained reading. Students should learn to evaluate information instead of passively consuming whatever algorithms deliver.

The objective is not to isolate young people from the digital world but to prepare them to engage with it more independently.

Education, however, is not enough. Policymakers must also change the incentives that reward platforms for keeping young people endlessly engaged.

Governments cannot instill maturity, but they can ensure that businesses built on capturing attention bear greater responsibility for the consequences of their design choices.
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