The European Parliament’s Committee on Culture and Education adopted a report last month in which they said that companies should guarantee that the use of social media and the digital environment is safe, particularly for children and young people. The Committee takes the view that the online environment must be governed by the principles of privacy-by-design and safety-by-default, age-appropriate design and algorithmic transparency.
The report highlights the impact of addictive and persuasive design features on the well-being of children and young people, and MEPs have advocated for a ban on the most harmful addictive practices. They also urged the platforms to include risk-based safeguards for their recommender systems. In addition, they are encouraging the European Commission to introduce personal liability where there is serious and persistent non-compliance with provisions on the protection of minors.
MEPs in the report also highlight the need for more transparency around social media algorithmic systems, such as opaque algorithms. They also reference content moderation which limits the ability of young users to understand why certain content is recommended, suppressed or removed, which deliberately undermines their ability to navigate online content.
When it comes to the role played by influencers, MEPs want the Commission and EU member states to develop an EU code of conduct and a collective definition of “influencer marketing”. The report says that minors should be protected from commercial exploitation activities such as kidfluencing, in which children are turned into influencers, and sharenting, where parents post their children’s lives online. MEPs have argued for consistency across all key EU laws and have also put forward various further proposals, which include:
- Introducing mandatory ethical standards for ‘AI companions’ that simulate virtual friendships to prevent manipulation of a minor’s emotional vulnerability.
- Improving transparency on the training of AI models including clarity on datasets, material used for AI systems, and child safeguarding measures.
- Mitigating the proliferation of AI-generated content impersonating media professionals and brands, so-called “celebrity scams”, and for the Commission to classify these as a systemic risk and intensify ongoing investigations under the Digital Services Act.
- Online platforms ensuring recommender systems and content moderation mechanism give more visibility to reliable and age-appropriate content and services provided by professional media organisations.
- A ban on AI systems generating, manipulating or altering realistic images or videos showing sexual content of an identifiable person without consent and synthetic child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
- Monitoring across EU member states, including development of comparable indicators including children’s digital habits, access to education and the effectiveness of protection measures, including implementation of age restrictions, age verification and safety settings.
