The European Commission has introduced the EU Kids Act, a proposal that would ban children under 13 from accessing social media and set 15 as the minimum age to open an unsupervised account.
The draft would require parental supervision for 13 and 14-year-olds, who could use age-appropriate social media and video-sharing platforms only through sub-accounts created by their parents.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the bloc had strong evidence of social media’s harm to developing brains and personalities. “To be very clear, an age limit does not mean letting tech companies off the hook for the content of the platform,” she said in a statement.
She added: “Platforms have been playing fast and loose with our children’s mental health. Now we are reversing the burden of proof.”
Children under 13 would be barred from social media but could use child-friendly video-sharing services through accounts managed by a guardian. The proposal said those “mini accounts” must include safeguards such as screen time limits of up to one hour a day and tools that let adults control what children can see.
For 13 and 14-year-olds, the supervised sub-accounts would also carry restrictions. Those would include limited social contact and a one-hour daily screen time limit.
The proposal would also require platforms to remove features the Commission described as addictive. Those measures would cover recommendation algorithms, infinite scroll, nighttime push notifications and unsolicited contact from strangers.
AI chatbots would have to be turned off by default under the draft. They would also be barred from creating emotional dependency.
Age verification would become mandatory when users open new accounts. Platforms would also have to use what the proposal calls reasonable proxies, including credit card details, to estimate the age of existing users.
Apps would be required to use age assurance tools that do not retain identity documents or biometric data. The proposal points to the new EU age verification app as an example.
Platforms would have to submit compliance plans, and enforcement would use structures already in place under the Digital Services Act. Under the DSA, penalties can reach 6% of a company’s global annual turnover, and the proposal would add a fast-track 90-day enforcement procedure.
The Commission said swift adoption was essential because of demand for urgent and comprehensive action at EU level. The proposal still faces legal and political hurdles, after France’s top court blocked a similar measure on the grounds that it infringed freedom of expression.
Bernhard Rohleder, chief executive of Germany’s IT industry association BITKOM, said age verification remained a technical challenge and that parallel regulation alongside existing laws such as the Digital Services Act was problematic and unnecessary.
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