Albania on Saturday introduced a one-year ban on TikTok, the favored brief video app, following the killing of an adolescent final month that raised fears over the affect of social media on kids.
The ban, a part of a broader plan to make colleges safer, will come into impact early subsequent yr, Prime Minister Edi Rama mentioned after assembly with dad and mom’ teams and academics from throughout the nation.
“For one yr, we’ll be utterly shutting it down for everybody. There will probably be no TikTok in Albania,” Rama mentioned.
A number of European international locations together with France, Germany and Belgium have enforced restrictions on social media use for kids. In one of many world’s hardest rules concentrating on Large Tech, Australia authorised in November an entire social media ban for kids beneath 16.
Rama has blamed social media, and TikTok particularly, for fuelling violence amongst youth in and outdoors faculty.
His authorities’s choice comes after a 14-year-old schoolboy was stabbed to loss of life in November by a fellow pupil. Native media had reported that the incident adopted arguments between the 2 boys on social media. Movies had additionally emerged on TikTok of minors supporting the killing.
“The issue in the present day isn’t our kids, the issue in the present day is us, the issue in the present day is our society, the issue in the present day is TikTok and all of the others which are taking our kids hostage,” Rama mentioned.
TikTok mentioned it was searching for “pressing readability” from the Albanian authorities.
“We discovered no proof that the perpetrator or sufferer had TikTok accounts, and a number of stories have in actual fact confirmed movies main as much as this incident have been being posted on one other platform, not TikTok,” an organization spokesperson mentioned.
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