Sweden mulling social media age limit to stop gangs recruiting young people

By Johan Ahlander

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Ministers in Sweden's government are considering imposing age limits on social media platforms if tech companies find themselves unable to prevent gangs from recruiting young people online to carry out murders and bombings in the Nordics.

A wave of gang crime has led to Sweden recording the most deadly shootings per capita in Europe, a reverse from two decades ago when it had among the lowest.

Over the last two years Swedish police say gangs have begun using social media platforms as "digital marketplaces" to openly recruit anonymous teenagers, in some cases as young as 11, to commit murders and bombings in the country and elsewhere in the Nordics.

"It's a very serious situation," Swedish Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer told Reuters after a meeting with other Nordic justice ministers and social media companies in Copenhagen on Monday.

"We are not ruling out anything," he said, adding that they would examine measures taken by other countries and see what was best for Sweden.

Australia passed a social media ban for children under 16 in November.

In the first seven months of this year 93 children in Sweden under the age of 15 are suspected of having been involved in planning murders, three times more than in the same period last year, according to police statistics.

Strommer said that representatives from TikTok, Meta, Google and Snapchat had promised to do "everything in their power" to tackle the issue and that it was up to the social media platforms to show "concrete results."

Telegram and Signal were also invited but did not attend, the Danish government said in a statement.

TikTok, Meta, Google, Snapchat, Telegram and Signal did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Danish police said this month that since April they had registered 32 cases in which Swedes were hired to commit violent crimes. The mostly young perpetrators have been labelled "child soldiers" by Danish politicians.

Swedish Education Minister Johan Pehrson said he was watching developments in Australia after a social media ban was imposed there recently.

"It's not a the first step but it's not ruled out," he said of a ban, but he added that the government would leave no stone unturned to stop children spending too much time on social media.

"We see that children are stuck in this dark sludge, throwing away their lives" he said.

(Reporting by Johan Ahlander; Additional reporting by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen; Editing by Hugh Lawson)