South Korea's Korea Communications Commission (the country's broadcasting and communications regulator) unveiled a proposal on July 16 to restrict children under 14 from opening social media accounts without parental consent, while introducing protections for teenagers aged 14–19 against features such as infinite scrolling, autoplay, and personalised recommendation algorithms. The initiative comes as the share of South Korean teenagers at risk of smartphone overdependence hit a record 43 percent in 2025, and amid a global wave of similar regulatory action in Australia, Brazil, the EU, and elsewhere. An editorial in The Korea Herald argues the plan's strength lies in targeting the engineered design of platforms rather than blaming young users, but warns that account bans alone risk repeating the failures of South Korea's 2011 gaming curfew law, which was widely circumvented and eventually scrapped, and calls for platform audits, default privacy protections, and expanded media literacy education.