By Yves Herman and Foo Yun Chee
STRASBOURG, France, Sept 17 (Reuters) – European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen set out a sweeping plan to keep children safe from online dangers on Thursday, proposing to ban under-13s from social media and require online services to design safe children’s accounts.
The move follows similar initiatives in Australia, Britain, China, India, Turkey and several European Union countries over concerns about the impact Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, TikTok, Google’s YouTube and ChatGPT have on children’s mental health and safety.
Australia’s challenges in enforcing its world-first social media ban for children under 16 could see Europe facing an uphill battle as well.
“Today, our children are engaging with some of the most sophisticated technology ever created, and it was not created with children’s well-being and development in mind,” von der Leyen told a press conference.
She said the proposed EU Kids Act “will set clear boundaries in the digital world just as we do it on a daily basis in the real world”.
PARENTAL CONTROL
Under the proposal, which must be negotiated with EU countries and the European Parliament in the coming months before it can become law, accounts for children aged between 13 and 15 will be under parental control.
Social media and video-sharing services, online video games, AI companions and chatbots for children below 18 will be subject to a list of dos and don’ts.
These include a ban on addictive features, profiling-based recommender feeds, infinite scroll, reward tricks and unsolicited contact from strangers. AI companions and chatbots must be turned off by default.
Online platforms must design algorithms safe for children and provide easy-to-use parental controls and tools to block and mute users.
The companies, which must verify users’ age when they open an account via age assurance tools, risk fines as much as 6% of their global annual sales for non-compliance. They will also have to pay a supervisory fee to fund regulators’ supervision.
Tech lobbying group CCIA Europe, whose members include Google and Meta, warned of the privacy risks arising from the proposal and conflicting requirements under other EU laws.
“Collecting age information, identity credentials, and data linking children with parents or guardians at this scale would undoubtedly create an attractive target for cybercriminals,” CCIA head Daniel Friedlaender said.
“The Kids Act creates legal overlap and duplication that ultimately weaken protections for children and consumers,” he said.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee and Yves Herman, editing by Inti Landauro, Richard Lough and Timothy Heritage)
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