ISLAMABAD — The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Chairman, retired Lt Gen Hafeez Ur Rehman, has said that regulation alone is not enough to deal with the harmful effects of social media, calling on parents, teachers and society as a whole to take shared responsibility for keeping children safe online.
Addressing the concluding session of the Digital Tahaffuz Summit in Islamabad, the PTA chief said that a safe and secure digital environment for Pakistanis remained the authority’s top priority — but he was candid about the limits of what a regulator can achieve on its own.
“Regulation alone is insufficient to address the harmful effects of social media,” the chairman told the gathering, stressing that protecting young users could not be left to rules and blocks alone. He said families, schools and communities all had a part to play in guiding children through the risks of the digital world.
Up to 1,500 complaints reach PTA every day
Highlighting the pressure on the regulator, Hafeez Ur Rehman revealed that the PTA receives between 1,000 and 1,500 complaints every single day, and that each of them is processed for necessary action. The sheer volume, he said, showed both how seriously the public takes online harms and how stretched the authority’s capacity is.
He explained that the PTA acts against online content mainly on the basis of complaints. The authority, he said, does not have an automated monitoring system, a large review team, or artificial-intelligence-based tools that would let it scan social media platforms proactively. It reacts to what citizens report rather than policing the internet on its own.
This complaint-driven model means that a great deal of harmful material only comes to the PTA’s attention after it has already spread — a gap the chairman acknowledged openly.
Why enforcement is an uphill battle
The chairman also pointed to a structural problem: the world’s biggest technology companies have no physical presence in Pakistan. Without local offices to deal with, he said, fully enforcing Pakistani laws on global platforms becomes far more difficult. He noted that other countries in the region faced the same challenge.
It was an unusually frank admission from the head of the telecom regulator — that even as complaints flood in by the thousand each day, the PTA’s enforcement reach stops at the borders of companies headquartered abroad.
A message for parents, not just policymakers
Rather than focusing only on policy, the chairman turned much of his address to the home. Children today, he said, ask questions and want logical explanations — and parents must meet them at that level instead of falling back on scolding and reprimands.
He urged parents to build friendly, trusting relationships with their children and to keep the lines of communication open about what they see online. He also encouraged families to involve children in outdoor sports and other physical activities, offering them alternatives to long stretches of screen time.
The suggestions placed the first line of defence inside the home: parents who talk with their children about the internet, and who give them somewhere healthier to spend their energy.
Social media lessons in the classroom
The chairman also called for formal education on the positive and negative aspects of social media to be included in school curricula. Children, he argued, need to understand both the benefits and the dangers of digital platforms — not as an afterthought, but as part of their education.
Appreciating the organisers of the summit, he said similar seminars should be held regularly in different cities across the country to promote digital awareness and help build a safer digital future for Pakistan. His remarks tied together three threads: honest limits of regulation, parental involvement at home, and education in schools.
The summit: Meta, ministers and a new teen-safety tool
The Digital Tahaffuz Summit was a one-day event hosted by Meta in Islamabad, dedicated to youth safety and online wellbeing. It was organised in partnership with the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication, the Ministry of Human Rights, the PTA, the Social Media Protection and Regulatory Authority, the National Commission on the Rights of Child, and Zindagi Trust.
Federal Minister for IT and Telecommunication Shaza Fatima Khawaja told the summit that child safety could not be left to parents alone to manage through complex settings — it had to be built into technology itself. Federal Minister for Human Rights Senator Azam Nazeer Tarar said the protection of human dignity and fundamental rights must extend to the digital world, particularly for women and children.
At the event, Meta launched “Digital Dialogues in Real Life”, a free browser-based experience that helps teenagers, parents, educators and community groups talk through everyday online situations together. Yuen Ting Chay, Meta’s Director of Public Policy for South and Central Asia, said online safety was a shared responsibility of parents, educators, governments and civil society, and that Teen Accounts on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger carried default protections for young users.
The PTA chairman’s closing message summed up the mood of the day: the regulator will keep processing the complaints that arrive by the thousand — but a safer internet for Pakistan’s children will need families, teachers, platforms and the state working together.
Sources: CW Pakistan; Global News Pakistan; APP.
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