Uruguay and Peru Push Social Media Rules

Uruguay, Peru, Colombia and Mexico are this week showing an active legislative map on social media, cybercrime and artificial intelligence. In Uruguay, Felipe Schipani introduced a bill to ban social media access for children under 15 and establish stronger protections for adolescents ages 15 to 17. In Peru, Bill 14760/2025-CR remains in committee and seeks to amend Law 30096 to punish the illicit use of AI in cybercrime. In Colombia, a similar initiative on digital platforms is still awaiting a report for first debate, while Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies continues to stack up bills on cybercrime and AI in the justice committee.

What does Schipani’s bill in Uruguay propose?

Felipe Schipani’s proposal in Uruguay would bar children under 15 from accessing social media and would also impose specific obligations on platforms to protect personal data and reduce risks for teenagers. The bill sets out enhanced rules for users between 15 and 17.

Among the proposed requirements are maximum privacy by default, blocking contact with unknown adults, disabling public geolocation, limits on nighttime notifications and a ban on advertising based on personal-data profiling. Coverage from Montevideo Portal added that the ban also applies to all minors under 18 when it comes to behavioral profiling-based advertising.

The text also requires platforms to use reasonable, effective and auditable age-verification tools, publish semiannual reports on suspended accounts, error rates and complaints, and defines a social network service as a platform with profiles, posts, interaction and algorithmic recommendations. Educational services, health services, private messaging, digital libraries, scientific repositories and platforms for children with reinforced safety are excluded. The duty to verify age falls exclusively on providers, and neither minors nor parents nor guardians can be sanctioned for noncompliance.

Who would enforce the law in Uruguay?

The designated enforcement authority is Agesic, working with the Personal Data Regulatory and Control Unit, the Ministry of Public Health, the Uruguayan Institute of Children and Adolescents and the National Administration of Public Education. The bill also provides for administrative penalties for platforms, including warnings, compliance orders and fines of up to 20,000 adjusted units.

Coverage from Carmelo Portal reported that the initiative was introduced on August 11, 2026. Under this design, the regulatory focus falls directly on platform providers rather than on underage users or their families.

What changes in Peru with PL 14760/2025-CR?

In Peru, Bill 14760/2025-CR seeks to strengthen the fight against cybercrime by regulating the illicit use of artificial intelligence and protecting digital identity. The text is moving through Congress and is listed as "In Committee" in the legislative register.

The proposal would amend Law 30096 to punish the illicit use of AI in cybercrime. It also defines terms such as "synthetic content" and "sufficient plausibility," adds aggravating factors for the use of AI in identity theft, criminalizes the design and distribution of AI tools for criminal purposes and creates an autonomous offense for the nonconsensual creation or dissemination of synthetic content.

The academic source consulted added that the bill would require digital platforms to remove illicit content within 48 hours, creating a concrete operational burden for intermediaries. That same source places the initiative within a broader legislative agenda in Peru, with other pending bills on digital sexual violence, governance and transparency in AI.

What is happening in Colombia and Mexico?

In Colombia, Bill PL 083/2026C, which regulates social media platforms and issues other provisions, is still moving through the House of Representatives and is awaiting publication of a report for first debate, according to legislative tracking by the University of the Andes.

In Mexico, recent coverage from Excélsior said the Chamber of Deputies is accumulating pending bills on cybercrime and the misuse of artificial intelligence, with draft decrees received by the Justice Committee to regulate cybercrime and AI in unlawful acts. At the same time, a regional comparative analysis by IAGovernance noted that two new data protection laws have been in force there since March 2025, one for private data controllers and another for public-sector data holders, although no specific artificial intelligence framework has been approved yet.

Boletín 18118-07 on Uruguay and Peru

Boletín 18118-07 brings together legislative progress in Uruguay and Peru on social media, cybercrime and artificial intelligence. The text also includes developments in Colombia and Mexico, but the core of the bulletin remains the Uruguayan and Peruvian proposals.

In Uruguay, Felipe Schipani introduced an initiative to restrict social media access for children under 15 and set a stronger regime for adolescents ages 15 to 17. In Peru, PL 14760/2025-CR seeks to amend Law 30096 to punish the illicit use of AI in cybercrime and broaden the regulatory focus on synthetic content and identity theft.