The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has submitted a response to the Islamabad High Court, clarifying that there is currently no law in the country banning the use of social media by children under 16 years of age, therefore, it cannot establish a system for verifying the age of children by exceeding the law and its powers.
On Thursday, the PTA submitted its detailed response to the Islamabad High Court in the case related to the ban on the use of social media by children under 16 years of age, while the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the Ministry of Interior and the National Commission on the Rights of the Child also submitted their responses to the court.
According to the PTA, there is currently no law banning the use of social media by children under 16 years of age, the PTA cannot establish a system for verifying the age of children by exceeding its powers, a new legal policy framework is necessary to protect children from online dangers.
PTA says that the power to block illegal online content is limited and temporary in nature, under PECA Amendment 2025, a Social Media Protection Authority is being established, a Social Media Protection Authority will be established soon to deal with complaints of illegal content and forgery.
In the PTA’s response, it was further stated that action against cybercrimes and the spread of immoral content is now the responsibility of the NCCIA.
According to the detailed response, PTA has so far reviewed more than 1.789 million illegal online links and URLs, more than 1.577 million illegal URLs have been blocked for online violations, the overall rate of blocking online content by PTA was 88.20 percent.
According to the PTA, 88.68 percent of links on TikTok, 87.34 percent on YouTube and 78.57 percent on Facebook were blocked, while 79.52 percent on Instagram and 48.42 percent on X (Twitter) were taken action, more than 1 million 66 thousand websites and links related to immoral content were blocked, more than 200,3 thousand on content against Islam, while more than 46 thousand links against national security were blocked.
