Norway's parliament said no to a 13-year age limit on buying a smartphone
Should buying a smartphone come with an age limit, the way energy drinks and some films do? Four Christian Democrat (KrF) MPs thought so, and asked the government to set the limit at 13. In June, parliament said no. Here's what the proposal actually said, what the limit would have meant in practice and why the majority turned it down.
Four KrF MPs proposed that nobody under 13 should be able to buy a smartphone in Norway, pointing out that Norwegian kids get smartphones earlier than kids almost anywhere else in Europe. The limit would have applied to the purchase itself, not the use. On 12 June 2026 parliament voted it down, with only KrF in favour. The majority's view: the problem isn't the phone but social media and app design, and the government is already working on age limits there.
What the proposal said
In the private members' motion, Dokument 8:236 S (2025–2026), Ida Lindtveit Røse, Jorunn Gleditsch Lossius, Jørgen H. Kristiansen and Harry Valderhaug of the Christian Democrats (KrF) asked the government to introduce a 13-year age limit on buying a smartphone in Norway. Their argument: Norway should lead the way with a clear, enforceable age limit, just as it has for other goods.
Where the proposal came from
The case rests on numbers anyone following this field will recognise. More than 90 per cent of Norwegian kids have a phone of their own by age 9 or 10, nearly all of them smartphones with the whole internet attached. Norwegian kids get smartphones earlier than kids in almost every other European country, according to the surveys the proposal leans on, from the Norwegian Media Authority and EU Kids Online. And eight in ten fifth-graders can get onto social media, despite the 13-year limit that already applies there.
One update to those numbers: in the Media Authority's latest survey, 87 per cent of 9 and 10-year-olds have their own phone, down from 93 per cent in 2024. So things are already inching in the direction the proposers wanted, just from a very high starting point.
What the limit would have meant in practice
Start with what the proposal was not. It was not a ban on under-13s owning or using a smartphone. The limit covered the purchase alone: an 11-year-old could no longer buy a smartphone themselves, in a shop or online. As I read the proposal, parents could still buy one and hand it over.
In practice, then, the limit would have done two things. It would have placed the decision squarely with parents, since a child could no longer spend birthday money or savings on their own. And it would have attached an official number to a question every family currently works out alone. The state would, in effect, have made 13 the reference point for a first smartphone, much as the Norwegian Directorate of Health's screen time advice is the reference point for screen time today.
How it ended in parliament
The family and culture committee ran a written hearing and received no fewer than 584 submissions, many of them from parents and school parent councils. Even so, in its recommendation of 21 May every party but KrF advised rejecting the proposal, and that's how it went: parliament debated the matter on 11 June, and in the vote on 12 June 2026 the proposal fell.
The majority's reasoning is worth a parent's time, because it turns less on disagreement about the facts than you might expect. The parties share the concern. They just think a purchase ban aims at the wrong target: it's almost always the parents who buy the phone, not the child, and the problem lives not in the device but in the access it gives to algorithm-driven social media and app design built to keep kids there. Several parties pointed instead to what the government already has in motion: a dedicated age limit for social media, and raising the age at which children can consent to the processing of their personal data from 13 to 15. This particular limit is off the table, but the rules around what kids meet on screen are still moving. I'll be following those cases.
Talking with your kids
“Some politicians in parliament thought you should have to be 13 to buy a smartphone, but most of them voted no, so there won't be a law like that for now. Whatever they decide in there, it's us here at home who decide when you get yours. And I promise you'll know why we land where we land.”
Know someone weighing up the first phone at home right now? Send them this, so they know where the politicians just landed.
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