European Parliament Demands Social Media Ban for Under-16s

TALLINN - The European Parliament is demanding that the European Union better protect children from the dangers of the internet, ban the most addictive techniques, and only allow social media use from the age of 16.

The Parliament adopted an own-initiative report expressing great concern about the internet's impact on the health of minors. In particular, the parliament points to manipulative and addictive strategies that online platforms use to capture users' attention. As these reduce children's ability to concentrate and make the internet harmful to their health, the parliament considers it necessary to urgently find solutions for better protecting children.

To make it easier for parents to monitor their children's online activities and to prevent children from encountering age-inappropriate content online, the parliament recommends establishing a minimum age limit for the use of social media, video-sharing platforms, and AI-based companions. According to the parliament, this limit could be 16 years across the European Union, with children able to access these platforms from the age of 13 with parental consent.

The Parliament also supports the development of precise and private EU-wide age verification applications and digital tools for identity verification. This should not release platforms from their obligation to ensure the safety and age-appropriateness of their products. To ensure legal compliance, the parliament recommends that company executives be held personally responsible for serious and persistent violations concerning the protection of minors and age verification.

Additionally, the parliament recommends banning the most addictive techniques and disabling by default all addictive features for minors, such as infinite scrolling, auto-playing videos, disappearing stories, rewards and incentives for continuous or repeated use, penalties for inactivity, pull-to-refresh mechanisms, dopamine traps, harmful gamification, and similar features.

The parliament also wants to establish rules for the use of targeted advertising, influencer marketing, addictive design, and dark patterns, and to ban recommendation systems for minors that are based on profile analysis and past activity.

The parliament also wants to oblige online video game platforms to comply with the requirements of the Digital Services Act and to ban so-called "loot boxes" and other randomized, gambling-like features in games. The parliament recommends protecting children from commercial exploitation, for example, by prohibiting platforms from paying child influencers.

In the parliament's view, the ethical and legal problems caused by generative artificial intelligence tools such as deepfakes, AI-based companions and chatbots, AI agents, and "undressing" apps must be addressed urgently.