The European Commission has introduced the EU Kids Act, the most sweeping proposal yet to limit minors from accessing social media platforms. If adopted, the law would ban social media for kids under 13 and require parental supervision for 13- and 14-year-olds. Only when a child turns 15 would they be able to create their own social media accounts. 

“Today, there is a robust body of evidence on the harm that social media does to a developing brain and personality, and too well parents see the effects of this,” said EU Commission president Ursula Von der Leyen in a statement. “To be very clear, an age limit does not mean letting tech companies off the hook for the content of the platform. 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 not be able to access social media, but would be able to use “specially designed child-friendly video-sharing services through accounts managed by their guardian,” the proposal states. Services on those “mini accounts” must be designed with safeguards like limited screen time up to one hour per day and offer adults an easy way to control what their kids see.

For kids aged 13 and 14, the proposal would allow parents to set up sub-accounts that would give their kids supervised access to “age-appropriate social media and video-sharing platforms,” the act states. Services available on these sub-accounts would also be designed with safeguards, like limited social contact and one hour per day of screen time. 

For platforms, the EU Kids Act would be among the first to force platforms to remove addictive features. Those would include recommendation algorithms that “drag minors into ‘rabbit holes’ of harmful contact,” the Commission wrote. It would also block infinite scroll, nighttime push notifications and unsolicited contact from strangers. AI chatbots would have to be turned off by default and not be allowed to create emotional dependency. 

Age verification is another key pillar, but has proved challenging to implement, as exemplified by territories like Australia. The EU would require platforms to perform such checks when someone opens a new account, and employ “reasonable proxies” like credit card details to estimate the age of current users. Apps must use age assurance tools that don’t retain identity documents or biometric data, like the new EU age verification app. 

Platforms would be obliged to submit compliance plans, with enforcement based on structures already in place under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). The Commission didn’t specify sanction amounts, but under the DSA, penalties can reach six percent of a company’s global annual turnover. It would also include a fast-track 90-day enforcement procedure. 

“Considering the clear demand for urgent and comprehensive action at Union level, it is essential that the act is adopted swiftly,” the EU wrote. Its passage isn’t a given, though. France’s top court blocked a similar proposal, saying it infringed upon freedom of expression. 

The EU has a population of around 450 million people, so the EU Kids Act would affect more users than any other social media age restriction laws, if implemented. The ban of addictive feature like recommendation algorithms would also be a new twist. Meta and other tech platforms have yet to comment, but criticism so far is mainly around the problems of age verification and duplicative legislation. “Age verification remains a technical challenge, and parallel regulation to existing laws like the Digital Services Act is problematic and unnecessary,” said Bernhard Rohleder, CEO of Germany’s IT industry association BITKOM.