Following a meeting with justice ministers from other Nordic countries and social media companies in Copenhagen on Monday, the 9th of December, Swedish government ministers announced that they are considering age restrictions on the use of social media platforms if technology companies fail to prevent online gangs from recruiting young people to commit violent crimes not only in Sweden but also elsewhere in the Nordic countries, reports Reuters.
The wave of gang crime in Sweden has resulted in the highest number of deaths per capita in Europe.
Swedish police say that over the past two years, gangs have started to use social media platforms as a “digital marketplace” to openly recruit anonymous teenagers, in some cases as young as 11, to carry out murders and bombings in the country and elsewhere in the Nordic countries.
“This is a very serious situation,” said Gunnar Strommer, Sweden’s Minister of Justice.
“We are not ruling anything out,” he said, adding that they would look into measures taken by other countries and see what would be best for Sweden.
Australia passed a ban on the use of social media platforms by children under 16 in November.
According to police statistics, in the first seven months of this year, 93 children under the age of 15 were suspected of involvement in planning murders in Sweden, three times more than in the same period last year.
Strommer said that TikTok, Meta, Google and Snapchat have promised to do “everything in their power” to tackle the problem and that social media platforms must show “concrete results”.
Telegram and Signal were also invited but did not attend, the Danish government said in a statement.
Danish police said earlier this month that they had recorded 32 cases of Swedish citizens being hired to commit violent crimes since April. Danish politicians have dubbed these mostly young criminals “child soldiers”.
Swedish Education Minister Johan Pehrson said he was following developments in Australia following the recent ban on social media.
“It will not be the first step, but it is not ruled out,” he said of the ban, but added that the government would look at all options to discourage children from spending too much time on social media because “we see that children … are wasting their lives”.