New Delhi, Feb. 3 -- Spain plans to ban social media access for children under 16, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Tuesday, in a move designed to shield young people from the harms of online content.

The progressive Spanish leader spoke at a summit in the United Arab Emirates, where he chided the world's biggest tech companies for allowing illegal content such as child sex abuse and nonconsensual sexualized deepfake images and videos on their platforms, saying that governments also needed to "stop turning a blind eye."

"Today, our children are exposed to a space they were never meant to navigate alone," Sanchez said. "We will no longer accept that."

In doing so, Spain joins a growing number of countries, including Australia a...