Sep 15, 2026
The European Commission is getting ready to put forward an EU Kids Act aimed at limiting young people’s use of services including Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, while introducing fresh safety obligations for digital offerings such as video games and AI chatbots, a confidential document obtained by Euronews indicates.
As outlined in the plan, anyone below the age of 15 would need a parent’s consent to open accounts on social media and video-sharing platforms, and technology firms would have to ensure their digital services are safe by design.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is anticipated to give a first look at the legislative proposal in her State of the Union speech before the European Parliament, which is gathered in plenary session. Publication of the bill is scheduled for Thursday.
France, Greece, Austria, Denmark, Spain, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Poland and the Netherlands are either weighing or pushing ahead with domestic laws on social media bans, adding to the pressure on Brussels to deliver a bloc-wide measure and prevent a patchwork of rules.
Back in July, an expert group brought together by the EU executive issued a set of recommendations on making the internet safer for children, and many of these ideas feature in the forthcoming draft law. According to the document, technology companies carry the main responsibility for ensuring their products are safe, and it is parents, not algorithms, who should bring up Europe’s children.
The bill reaches further than initially expected, taking in other online services judged potentially harmful to minors, in particular video games and AI companions, a step that Spain and the Netherlands called for just last week.
Social media, video-sharing platforms and online games, seen as carrying specific design risks for minors, fall within the draft EU Kids Act, along with AI-powered chatbots and companions, which the text describes as virtual tools capable of offering mental health and personal development advice to minors.
Left outside the scope are services built and run for educational purposes or by public authorities, together with AI systems meant for office or industrial use.
Two elements are combined in the proposal: safety-by-design obligations for every digital service in question, and a minimum age rule that covers only social media platforms such as TikTok and video-sharing platforms such as YouTube.
All minors under 15 fall under the age restrictions, which follow a graduated approach. Those under three are completely shut out of social media and other high-risk services. Between three and 13, children may use child-friendly services with adult supervision. For those aged 13 to 15, access to social media and video-sharing platforms would be restricted, with fewer features and parental control.
For minors between 15 and 18, safety-by-design rules would still apply, even though teenagers in that bracket could reach the platforms without a parent’s consent.
Firms such as Meta and Google would be obliged to check users’ ages when a new account is created, relying on an EU-wide age-verification app or other national solutions that merely establish whether the user is above a given age. For accounts that already exist, verification must be proportionate, drawing for instance on how long the user has been subscribed to the service.
A set of dos and don’ts for tech companies, intended to guarantee a safe, age-appropriate experience across their digital services, forms part of the draft EU Kids Act. Specifically, the bill prohibits design features including infinite scrolling, artificial notifications and certain reward mechanisms.
Recommender systems, the algorithms deciding which content to show, ought to be built so as to steer clear of so-called rabbit holes and other recommendations generated purely by engagement-based signals. Risky settings should come disabled by default, minors’ account content would need to be private, unknown users would be unable to reach them, and reporting harmful content should be straightforward.
Age-appropriate parental control tools for parents are also envisaged in the bill. The document says these rules and principles will be supplemented by tailored commitments for online games, AI chatbots and companions, in a co-regulatory approach resting on industry-led self-regulation.
Brussels has frequently faced criticism for enforcing its digital rules too leniently, since the online environment tends to evolve faster than public authorities can respond. The Commission therefore proposes to place the onus on tech companies to demonstrate that they meet child-safety rules.
Online services already under the Digital Services Act’s stricter regime, because they are considered to pose a systemic risk to society, would need authorisation from the Commission before introducing any new features that might affect children. A supervisory fee would be levied on tech companies to fund enforcement.
