Indonesia, already leading Southeast Asia’s push to keep children off risky digital platforms with an under-16 social media ban, now wants to extend those protections to e-commerce after officials said young people had become victims of online scams and unsupervised digital spending.

The plan has drawn support from child psychologists, who warn of impulsive consumption among young users. However, it also presents e-commerce companies with a difficult compliance test: building age-verification systems that are accurate, practical and protect personal data without creating too much user friction.

Meutya Hafid, communications and digital affairs minister, told Agence France-Presse on May 6 that the country’s recent ban on social media for teenagers, effective since March 28, would expand to e-commerce platforms “because we found children who became scam victims through e-commerce”.

The ban on children using “all digital platforms” was meant to help parents protect their children, Meutya said.

“Letting them face off against [the platforms] alone, without rules, is like letting parents play chess against a grandmaster. They won’t win, or it will be very hard to win,” she said.

Indonesia’s social media ban requires companies to implement an age verification mechanism, and failure to do so will be met with punishments such as a fine or blockage of their services.