The European Commission unveiled sweeping new rules on Thursday that would bar children under 13 from social media entirely and sharply restrict access for young teenagers, in what officials are calling the bloc's most ambitious attempt yet to regulate how minors use online platforms.
The proposal, dubbed the EU Kids Act, was presented by Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and sets a tiered system of access by age. Children under three would be barred entirely from social media and other high-risk digital services. Those aged three to 13 could use child-directed services only under adult supervision. Adolescents aged 13 to 15 would be limited to guardian-supervised "mini-accounts" capped at one hour of daily screen time, with default private settings and restricted contact lists. Only at 15 would teenagers gain the ability to open standard accounts without parental consent, though safety-by-design requirements would remain in place until they turn 18.
Age verification and enforcement
Under the plan, reported in detail by Euronews ahead of Thursday's formal unveiling, companies including Meta and Google would be required to verify users' ages when new accounts are opened, either through an EU-wide age-verification app or approved national alternatives designed to confirm only whether a user is above a given threshold. Platforms would also be legally required to eliminate design features regulators say are built to exploit adolescent psychology, including infinite scroll, push-notification triggers and engagement-based reward loops. The scope extends beyond conventional social networks to video-sharing platforms, online video games and AI-based chatbots and companion apps, reflecting growing concern in Brussels about children's exposure to generative-AI tools.
Child-safety advocates broadly welcomed the announcement, though some consumer groups raised concerns about the verification mechanism itself. Agustin Reyna of the European consumer organization BEUC said "age verification is not a silver bullet and would raise serious privacy and data protection concerns," urging regulators to pair the rules with stronger data-protection safeguards for any tool used to confirm a user's age.
What happens next
The Irish Times reported that the plan will only take effect after negotiation between the European Parliament and EU member states, a process officials expect could take months given the scale of the changes demanded of platform operators. Technology companies have not yet issued detailed responses to the specific provisions, though industry groups are expected to push back on the compliance burden of universal age verification. If adopted largely as proposed, the rules would give the EU among the strictest youth social-media regimes of any major economy, a marked escalation beyond the patchwork of national restrictions individual member states have pursued in recent years.
