MEXICO CITY — President Claudia Sheinbaum devoted her entire Monday, August 3 morning press conference to a single subject: the risks social media and screen use pose to Mexican children and adolescents, previewing a formal government proposal she says will arrive by the end of August, just before the new school year begins.
New Challenges
Speaking from the National Palace, Sheinbaum framed the issue in public health terms, arguing that excessive social media and cell phone use “can have implications for the rest of their lives” for children, and that if the affected population is “all children and all adolescents,” the consequences extend to the country’s overall development.
The president was careful to frame the effort as building consensus rather than issuing a top-down ban: “There will be those who disagree, but the goal is to generate a national discussion on this issue and create awareness of the impacts it can have,” she said, adding that families — not just the state — bear real responsibility for setting limits at home.
Sheinbaum specifically described the design of digital platforms as engineered to maximize the time young people spend on them, and said her government has maintained dialogue with social media platforms on related issues like recruitment of youth by criminal groups and violence against women, but that platforms have not yet engaged with the screen-addiction question her administration has been raising in recent Monday conferences.
The Data Behind the Push
Officials presented internal Meta research during the briefing, highlighting specific findings about risks facing 13-to-15-year-olds on social platforms: one in five reported feeling worse about themselves, their body, or their body image because of their interactions on these platforms; one in eight reported experiencing sexual harassment; and one in eleven reported exposure to content related to suicide or self-harm.
Officials also cited polling showing roughly 70% of Mexican parents support restricting cell phone use during the school day entirely.
The Expert Guests
Sheinbaum’s conference featured Jonathan Haidt, the NYU social psychologist and author of “The Anxious Generation,” who argued that childhood shifted between 2010 and 2015 from a traditional, play-based model to what he called a “phone-based childhood.”
Haidt warned that screen exposure among children under six poses particular risk, since it triggers an immediate dopamine release that affects brain development during infancy, and noted that in the United States, roughly 40% of children under two already have access to screens — devices he described functioning as a “digital pacifier.”
Arturo Béjar, a former Meta and Instagram engineer turned online-safety advocate, also participated, arguing that regulation genuinely helps reduce social media and digital device use among young people.
Sheinbaum offered her own anecdotal observation from her travels: “When I go to the Sierra Tarahumara, girls and boys, and young people have a cell phone — not all of them, obviously, but a very high percentage of the mother or father’s phone gets left with the girl or boy. So part of what we discussed today is that this isn't just a personal problem, it’s a design that provokes addiction.”
Sheinbaum’s Regulations
The concrete proposal remains a work in progress rather than a finished policy. Sheinbaum said the government will present two separate initiatives: one aimed at schools, expected toward the end of August ahead of the new school year, and a second, broader proposal for society at large, to follow afterward.
The school-focused measure is expected to establish rules around cell phone use during the school day, building on the roughly 70% parental support for such restrictions. The broader societal measure would address regulation of digital platforms themselves, though Sheinbaum has been explicit that no actual legislative bill has been drafted yet — the current phase consists of public forums, expert panels, and consultations across different states, feeding into whatever proposal eventually gets presented, potentially to Mexico’s Congress.
Officials have also floated strengthening Mexico’s public media and educational content as a complementary strategy, citing a loss of 14 million viewers from broadcast television and radio over the past six years as digital platforms have displaced traditional media among younger audiences.
Sheinbaum’s Stated Approach: Consensus, Not Prohibition
Throughout the briefing, Sheinbaum repeated that the objective is not to flatly ban technology, but to build an informed, collective decision that protects minors without the measures being perceived as an imposition — including making sure young people themselves understand the impact of excessive platform use on their own development and behavior, rather than experiencing new rules as arbitrary restrictions handed down from above.
Why This Matters
The initiative places Mexico among a growing number of governments globally grappling with how to regulate children’s social media use, and Infobae’s reporting notes Sheinbaum is pressing forward with this framing as a public health matter even as it runs counter to the general U.S. policy posture on platform regulation.
With two separate proposals — one for schools, one for society broadly — still in development and no legislative text yet drafted, the coming weeks of public forums will likely determine how far Sheinbaum’s government is ultimately willing to go, and how quickly any resulting measure could reach Congress.
