It cites data that shows that children who started using social media before the age of 10 “report 7.5 hours of weekend day screen time, compared to 5.7 hours among those who started after age 14,” in addition to concerns of social pressures and risks of isolation, concentration and learning issues, and distressing online content. The act goes on to mention generative AI and the dangers surrounding the possibility of AI-generated deepfakes or dangerous advice given by chatbots, in addition to misuse of personal data by platforms like TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X, as well as their related AI services. It claims that the current EU frameworks and legislature are insufficient to protect users against these dangers.
To address these issues, the EU Kids Act would “limit the access of tech companies to our children, and not the other way around,” by setting a minimum age and safe design requirements for a variety of online services. Social media would be completely off-limits to children aged 0-3, while fully parent-controlled accounts would be required for ages 3-13. Meanwhile, for children 13-15 years of age, parents would be allowed to set up “introductory accounts.” These social media accounts would be “limited to a maximum number of peer-only contacts and limited screen time per day,” and they would facilitate parental supervision and control via a separate guardian app.
By the time users are 15-18 years of age, they would be allowed to switch to fully autonomous accounts for social media and video-sharing apps.
For online games specifically, obligatory age recommendation will be required for every game with strict enforcement through age verification in a software application store upon download of the game.
In addition, in order for social media services to not get access to children before the safety design have been fully verified by public authorities, the proposal will foresee verification of such services before they are made available to minors.
The EU Kids Act would also force online service providers to follow “Safe Design” principles, which consist of:
- No addictive design features.
- Regulated recommendation algorithms that can be tuned and controlled to avoid doom-scrolling and “rabbit hole effects.”
- Safe account settings that would reduce the risk to its users by keeping content private and keeping users informed.
- No unwanted contact from other users.
- Easy reporting of harmful content.
- Easy and age-appropriate parental control systems.
Of course, as the act outlines, all of these rules would require age verification to enforce, and the EU Kids Act would make age verification obligatory for any new social media accounts, which it specifies needs to be “privacy-preserving and accessible,” and “would be done by relying on the EU age verification tool or other solutions by public authorities that offer an equivalent level of accuracy, reliability, robustness, privacy, security, nondiscrimination, and non-intrusiveness.” The act would also make social media companies pay a supervisory fee to the EU in order “to fund and support the Commission’s EU-wide enforcement and supervision work.”
The EU Kids Act has yet to be passed by the European Commission, and this may not be the final version of the act that eventually gets reviewed and discussed by the Commission. The full draft as published by Euractiv can be accessed at this link.
