LONDON: As governments move to tighten rules around children’s access to social media, Saudi users appear to be sending a different message: not rejection, but growing caution, selectiveness and a demand for stronger guardrails.
In the Arab world, the discussion has become more visible following recent measures in the UAE and Turkiye. The UAE’s new law will bar social media platforms from offering services to children under 15 and places obligations on platforms, regulators and caregivers.
Yet behind the policy debate, users — especially younger ones — are already changing their behavior on their own. According to a recent Deloitte survey in Saudi Arabia, 41 percent of respondents said social media access should be limited to those aged 16 and above, with support rising to 66 percent among Gen Z.
“This points us towards a ‘cost–benefit’ view among young Saudis, wherein they value social media, use it heavily, but also believe that the ‘timing’ and ‘guardrails’ are important, especially for younger teens,” Emmanuel Durou, partner and TMT leader at Deloitte Middle East, told Arab News.
“Even if the respondents personally use social media a lot, they may believe the environment is engineered to be addictive.”
Social media has grown from a college networking tool into one of the defining mass media systems of the modern internet, with an advertising model that has helped shape how web platforms operate.
But the sector is now facing growing scrutiny over its social impact, its role in attention capture and the pressure it places on children and teenagers.
“A significant portion (of the public) still leans toward awareness and platform safeguards,” said Durou. “Age bans are easy to announce but hard to enforce without intrusive verifications and workarounds.”
He added that social media is now economically and socially embedded through small-business marketing, social commerce, community building and events, making blanket restrictions difficult to justify in practice.
“A ban could threaten newer marketplace opportunities and greatly reduce digital participation from a significant population.”
Global social media advertising revenue has climbed sharply in recent years, with Research and Markets valuing the market at $234.34 billion in 2026.
Yet despite that growth, users are showing signs of fatigue.
Deloitte’s Digital Consumer Trends 2026 report found that nearly 29 percent of users in Saudi Arabia deleted at least one social media app in the past year. The main reasons were excessive time consumption, increasingly dull content, too many ads and exposure to inappropriate material.
That finding echoes broader signs of platform fatigue. A Financial Times study last year found that adults aged 16 and older in developed markets were spending an average of two hours and 20 minutes a day on social platforms at the end of 2024, down almost 10 percent from 2022.
The results prompted the paper to question whether we have passed the peak of social media use, especially among teens and 20-somethings, who are leading the decline.
“It’s a strong signal of oversaturation, but not necessarily a sign of social media decline,” Durou said. “Deleting at least one app typically indicates portfolio rationalization.”
He said users’ attention was becoming “more concentrated, more intentional and more expensive,” meaning the ad-funded model would not disappear, but would need to evolve.
“The future ecosystem will demand better ad frequency, fewer but higher yields with contextual targeting, and better storytelling with stronger campaigns,” he said.
Emmanuel Durou, partner and TMT leader at Deloitte Middle East. (Supplied)
That more selective behavior is also visible in paid digital subscriptions. Deloitte found that only categories such as sports and cloud storage saw notable growth, suggesting Saudi users are increasingly defining value online in outcome-based terms rather than paying for broad access or optional extras.
“The subscription model isn’t fundamentally unsustainable,” Durou said. “Users will pay when a service is clearly essential, hard to substitute, or reliably used.”
He added that the trend fits with the Kingdom’s expanding telecom-content bundles, where entertainment is increasingly packaged into mobile and home-internet plans.
Over the past decade, Saudi Arabia has moved from a relatively limited ICT base to a highly digitized economy, with internet penetration at 99 percent, rapid growth in e-commerce and cloud adoption, and major gains in e-government performance and artificial intelligence readiness.
GenAI adoption has also surged in the Kingdom, rising to 66 percent over the past year, slightly above the UK in the comparable sample.
That shift suggests a rapid move from early curiosity to mainstream use, as consumers increasingly integrate tools such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini into daily life.
“This raises the baseline expectation for digital experiences as KSA users are already fast adopters,” said Durou.
He said marketers will need to move more quickly on localization, personalization and niche campaigns.
“Building trust through personalization will be a key aspect in the GenAI world,” he said, adding that spending will shift away from brands that fail to offer enough value.
The “Lost Screen Memorial” — giant illuminated smartphones representing 50 children who died following harm linked to social media — was displayed at Place des Nations in Geneva ahead of the 79th World Health Assembly. In the Arab world, the debate has gained momentum after recent measures in the UAE and Türkiye. (AFP/File)
Deloitte is not only observing Saudi Arabia’s digital transformation — it is also building into it.
The company opened the Middle East’s first Deloitte Digital Center in Riyadh in 2019, presenting it as a place where clients can test, refine and implement digital solutions alongside its teams.
In 2023, it expanded further with a new regional headquarters at KAFD in Riyadh, saying Saudi Arabia hosts the largest share of its regional workforce and remains central to its growth strategy — and framing the Kingdom as a key market for cloud and AI expansion.
The report, however, also points to a gap between consumer adoption and workplace use of AI.
While GenAI is widely used for personal purposes such as learning, skills development and study, adoption at work remains at an early stage, with most users relying on free tools and employer support still limited.
On the enterprise side, there is a strong government push for AI and automation, but only 35 percent of employees say they feel encouraged by their companies to use GenAI at work.
At the same time, around 60 percent of Millennials worry that GenAI will reduce jobs, particularly in mid-career roles.
“National strategies can set the direction and the funding, but most organizations still need to translate that into approved use cases, redesigned processes, new KPIs, and governance,” said Durou, noting that many firms hesitate to encourage GenAI because of unresolved concerns around confidentiality, client information, intellectual property, hallucinations, accuracy and liability.
He added that the debate should move beyond fears of mass unemployment and toward how AI can support job growth by making services faster and cheaper.
“While entry-level pathways may change with AI automation, human workforce will still be required for supervised responsibility and to fill the missing middle layer,” Dorou said.
“Therefore, the objective should be to reduce fear, increase further adoption, and upskill everyone towards AI literacy.”
Durou said the broader trend points to a shift from heavy usage toward digital maturity, as users become more conscious of where they spend their time and money.
Looking ahead, he expects AI to become the interface layer for discovery and services, while platforms compete more on trust, safety, controls and less intrusive monetization.
