By Johan Ahlander
Ministers in Sweden’s authorities are contemplating imposing age limits on social media platforms if tech corporations discover themselves unable to stop gangs from recruiting younger individuals on-line to hold out murders and bombings within the Nordics.
A wave of gang crime has led to Sweden recording probably the most lethal shootings per capita in Europe, a reverse from 20 years in the past when it had among the many lowest.
Over the past two years Swedish police say gangs have begun utilizing social media platforms as “digital marketplaces” to overtly recruit nameless youngsters, in some instances as younger as 11, to commit murders and bombings within the nation and elsewhere within the Nordics.
“It is a very severe state of affairs,” Swedish Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer instructed Reuters after a gathering with different Nordic justice ministers and social media corporations in Copenhagen on Monday.
“We’re not ruling out something,” he stated, including that they’d study measures taken by different nations and see what was finest for Sweden.
Australia handed a social media ban for youngsters underneath 16 in November.
Within the first seven months of this 12 months 93 kids in Sweden underneath the age of 15 are suspected of getting been concerned in planning murders, 3 times greater than in the identical interval final 12 months, in line with police statistics.
Strommer stated that representatives from TikTok, Meta, Google and Snapchat had promised to do “the whole lot of their energy” to sort out the problem and that it was as much as the social media platforms to point out “concrete outcomes.”
Telegram and Sign have been additionally invited however didn’t attend, the Danish authorities stated in a press release.
TikTok, Meta, Google, Snapchat, Telegram and Sign didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
Danish police stated this month that since April that they had registered 32 instances wherein Swedes have been employed to commit violent crimes. The largely younger perpetrators have been labelled “little one troopers” by Danish politicians.
Swedish Schooling Minister Johan Pehrson stated he was watching developments in Australia after a social media ban was imposed there just lately.
“It isn’t a step one nevertheless it’s not dominated out,” he stated of a ban, however he added that the federal government would depart no stone unturned to cease kids spending an excessive amount of time on social media.
“We see that kids are caught on this darkish sludge, throwing away their lives” he stated.
This text was produced by Reuters information company. It has not been edited by International South World.
