Mexico Will Finally Debate Regulating Cell Phones, Social Media, and AI for Minors

Claudia Sheinbaum announced this week that her administration will open a national discussion on restricting cell phone use for minors, regulating social media access, and setting guardrails around artificial intelligence. The debate starts after the World Cup final on July 19, and it could reshape how an entire generation of Mexican children interacts with technology.

Speaking at her morning press conference, the president said the government will bring together specialists across multiple forums to work out the details. The goal is to balance the right to information with the protection of minors' mental and physical health. "This is not about censoring content or pursuing political interests," Sheinbaum said. "It is about establishing protective measures for children and adolescents."

The administration has already surveyed parents nationwide, and those results will feed into the guidelines being drafted. The framework could ultimately apply to schools across the country, establishing rules for when and how students can use devices during school hours, which social media platforms they can access, and how AI-powered tools may be deployed in educational settings.

Mexico arrives late to this conversation, but not by much. Australia passed a social media ban for under-16s last year. France restricts phones in primary and secondary schools. Spain, the United Kingdom, and several US states are all wrestling with the same fundamental question: how much screen time is too much, and who decides where the line falls?

What sets Mexico's effort apart is the inclusion of AI in the same regulatory framework. Most countries treat social media regulation and AI governance as separate tracks, but Sheinbaum's government is bundling them into one debate. It is an acknowledgment that the two are increasingly inseparable in the lives of young users. The algorithms that determine what children see on TikTok, the feeds that shape their opinions, their self-image, their sense of the world, are a form of AI, and they operate with almost no oversight today.

The survey results, though not yet published in full, reportedly show broad support among Mexican parents for restricting cell phone access during school hours, a finding consistent with polls in other countries that have enacted similar measures. The government has not specified whether the eventual regulation would take the form of a federal law, executive decree, or voluntary guidelines for schools, leaving much of the detail to the post-World Cup discussions.

The World Cup pause gives the administration space to prepare the conversation. But once the tournament ends on July 19, the real work begins. Mexico will have to decide whether it is ready to tell a generation of children to put the phone down, step away from the algorithm, and let someone other than a recommendation engine decide what they see.