Kids Act: EU-wide child online safety measures trailed

Initial details of what is planned with the new EU Kids Act have been reported by Politico. According to its report, the new EU-wide child online safety measures would be graduated depending on the risk posed by services and the age of users, with a distinction drawn between children under 13 years of age, under 15 years of age, and over the age of 15.

The report suggests that under 13s will be able to access platforms subject to full parental control and safety measures, while 13-to-15-year-olds will be offered a different type of account with limits on screen time and contact with strangers and be subject to some parental controls. Children aged 15 or over would be free to create their own online accounts without parental oversight.

The new measures would be underpinned by age-gating requirements and subject to a new enforcement regime.

The formal proposals are due to be made public on Thursday, although European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen is expected to refer to the plans in her annual ‘state of the union’ address before MEPs on Wednesday.

If the Commission’s formal proposals match the details of the Politico report, they would go some, but not all, the way to implementing recommendations made by an expert panel it set up to advise it on child online safety.

In its report published in July, the expert panel called for “a harmonised EU-wide access restriction to social media and other digital services, including AI companions, for children under 13”, with only limited exceptions – including where the digital environment is “age-appropriate”, access is “time-limited”, and if there is either “parental authorisation and supervision” or access is enabled “in educational contexts”.

The panel recommended a further set of measures for children aged between 13 and 18, including “limits on infinite scrolling, autoplay, push notifications, and problematic personalised recommendation engines”. It said “protective default settings” should also be set to “tackle addictive design, dark patterns, unsolicited contact and rabbit holes”, adding that these additional measures should “adaptable” so as “to continuously address new harmful design features”.

Providers of digital services should have to prove “their products and services are safe for minors” before they could make their services accessible to children, according to the panel.

Online safety expert Lauro Fava of Pinsent Masons said the EU Kids Act “will be a new EU behemoth” comparable to the existing Digital Services Act and the AI Act as it will establish “an entirely new regulatory framework with its own enforcement mechanisms”.

“The proposal seems like it will be far more sensible than the various social media bans that have been proposed, including in the UK,” Fava said. “Children will continue to be able to see the photos gran posts online while on holiday, without the risk of being contacted by a predator while they do so. It feels like this would strike a better balance between the different rights of children, including their right to safety but also their right to associate with others and access information. It would be more in line with the UN principle of the best interests of the child.”

However, Fava said there is bound to be debate over the proposal since many EU countries have already pushed ahead with their own national proposals on child online safety.

Just last month, the Constitutional Council in France determined that Article 1 of a proposed new French law aimed at protecting minors from the risks associated with the use of social networks, which would have prohibited access to social media services for minors under the age of 15, was unconstitutional. At the time, Annabelle Richard of Pinsent Masons in Paris said she did not think the ruling would dissuade EU law makers from pursuing EU-wide child online safety measures.

Fava said: “Governments have been facing public pressure to act for years, and they didn't feel like they could wait for the EU to intervene. If the proposal becomes law, it will end years of frustration. For affected companies, they will be able to comply with a single, coherent, and potentially more balanced rulebook than if they had to deal with a multitude of member state laws.”

“In practice, this is likely to mean universal age checks, which both privacy and free-speech advocates lament about. This is not a new issue, since various laws already effectively require age checks, and it is an unavoidable problem, since the same would happen if member states went on to regulate on their own. The Commission has already been exploring solutions for age checking methods which respect user privacy, primarily on the concept of zero-knowledge proof. This new legislative proposal increases the urgency that those efforts come to fruition,” he said.

Late last year, Australia became the first country in the world to ban children under the age of 16 accessing social media platforms. Earlier this summer, the UK government outlined its own plans to prohibit social media platforms from offering their services to children under the age of 16, from spring 2027.