The European Union has announced plans to restrict children’s access to social media across member states in a bid to free them from what President of the Commission Ursula von der Leyen described as the “capture [of] their attention, their focus, their minds” by the platforms.
The proposal for a total ban on social media for children under 13 was announced in Wednesday’s State of the Union speech, where von der Leyen set out the Union’s priorities for the year ahead.
It’s part of an EU Kids Act, which the Commission will unveil fully on Thursday. Children aged 13 to 15 will also not be allowed personal social media accounts but will be able to access social media through mini accounts set up and supervised by parents and guardians, with limited features, for one hour per day. Platforms will also have safe design obligations for users up to 18, with the Union planning to tackle addictive design further in the upcoming Digital Fairness Act in Autumn.
“I am aware that many perceive the power of Big Tech as overwhelming and impossible to roll back. I disagree,” von der Leyen told the European Parliament. “We do not have to accept addictive features, we do not have to accept children being drawn into ever more extreme content, we do not have to accept that girls have their photos used for-AI generated sexualised images,” she added. “Europe has the power to act; it is us who decide the rules, not Big Tech.”
The EU was largely expected to follow other countries in restricting children’s access to social media, which von der Leyen said has been responsible for sleep loss, anxiety, self harm, and even the deaths of European children. Seventeen of the bloc’s 27 member states are already negotiating or preparing draft legislation to protect minors online, including by setting out a minimum age to access certain services. Among those is France, whose top court last month struck down a ban on social media for under-15s because it infringed upon freedom of expression.
“Cleaning up that mess, getting everyone on the same page, then running through the EU legislative process,” will probably take until 2029, expects Ashurst Perkins Coie technology lawyer Arnav Joshi. Still, he believes companies will welcome the clarity and simplicity provided by a single set of EU-wide rules. The tiered approach is designed to placate any judicial challenges by being proportionate—a rare example of where “the EU law, by not introducing a blanket ban, is perhaps even a little bit more permissive than others,” he told WIRED, referencing the sweeping social media bans in the UK and Australia.
But the measures still force oversight on both guardians and the social media platforms themselves, which could risk privacy infringements. Parental monitoring could be “problematic” says Joshi, who advises global technology companies on children’s online safety, warning: “anything that has deep dive, God-mode style parental access can have a bit of a chilling effect on how children actually use that service and could have issues in terms of their own right to privacy.”
The European bloc will also face similar challenges to other countries in effectively enforcing the age limits. Children in Australia have widely been able to circumvent the country’s under-16s ban on social media access. “A key issue is how to carry out the age checks and it’s not straightforward,” Joanna Conway, digital regulation partner at law firm Norton Rose Fulbright, told WIRED. Making age checks accurate, without infringing on privacy rights or harming user experience, is a challenge, she added. The EU introduced an app earlier in the year so members can prove they are over 18 and access adult-restricted sites, which it says can be applied to other age groups.
