The European Parliament Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee has adopted a report in which they express concerns over major online platforms’ failure to protect minors adequately and warn of the risks relating to addiction, mental health, and exposure to illegal and harmful content.
Age assurance and minimums
The report supports the European Commission’s efforts to develop privacy-preserving age assurance systems, while warning that such measures must respect children’s rights and privacy, and do not absolve platforms of the responsibility to make their services safe by design.
The MEPs propose an EU-wide digital minimum age of 16 for access to social media, video sharing platforms and AI companions, unless authorised by parents, and a minimum age of 13 to access any social media.
Stronger action by the Commission
The report states that the Commission should make full use of its powers under the Digital Services Act, including issuing fines or, as a last resort, banning non-compliant sites or applications that endanger minors. They also call on the Commission to:
- consider introducing personal liability for senior management in cases of serious and persistent breaches of rules to protect minors, especially age verification;
- ban engagement-based recommender algorithms for minors and disable the most addictive design features by default;
- ensure that recommender systems do not present content to minors based on profiling;
- ban gambling-like mechanisms such as “loot boxes” in games accessible to minors;
- prohibit platforms from monetisation or providing financial or material incentives for kidfluencing (minors acting as influencers);
- address the ethical and legal challenges arising from AI-powered nudity apps (that allow users to generate manipulated images of individuals without their consent); and
- firmly enforce AI Act rules against manipulative and deceptive chatbots.
Closing legal loopholes
Some of the above issues came up as part of the European Commission’s Digital Fitness Check. MEPs support the idea that persuasive technologies, such as targeted ads, influencer marketing, addictive design, loot boxes and dark patterns, be tackled under the future Digital Fairness Act. The report calls for EU action to address manipulative features like infinite scrolling, autoplay, disappearing stories, and harmful gamification practices that deliberately exploit minors’ behaviour to boost engagement and spending.
Next steps
The European Parliament will vote on its recommendations to increase minors’ safety online at the November plenary session.
