BRUSSELS, September 16 — European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the proposed “EU Kids Act” in Brussels on Wednesday, during her State of the Union address to the European Parliament, setting out a sweeping digital health initiative that would ban social media for children under thirteen across all twenty-seven EU member states and mandate strict parental oversight for young teenagers aged thirteen to under fifteen. “It is not about our minors accessing social media.
It is about when and how we allow social media to access minors,” von der Leyen said in her address.
A stricter framework than the expert panel advised
The proposal builds directly on recommendations from an EU expert panel, which urged Brussels to establish an EU-wide minimum digital age and shift the burden of proof onto technology companies. But the leaked Commission draft, published online by the media group Euractiv, adopts a significantly stricter approach than the panel advised. While the panel recommended a single access restriction below age thirteen alongside more evolving autonomous use for older adolescents, the draft extends mandatory parental oversight up to age fifteen.
Under the proposed framework, adolescents aged thirteen to under fifteen may only access guardian-supervised “mini-accounts” restricted to an explicit one-hour daily screen-time cap, default private settings, and limited contact lists. By opting for supervised mini-accounts rather than an outright ban, Brussels seeks to avoid the legal flaws of France’s national law, which the country’s Constitutional Council struck down over constitutional rights concerns for disproportionately restricting minors’ freedom of expression.
Safety-by-design obligations and the burden of proof
The draft strategy specifically targets “Social Media+” platforms, video-sharing services, and conversational artificial intelligence companions that pose psychological risks to developing brains. Platform operators would be legally required to enforce safety-by-design standards by default, including eliminating infinite scrolling, push-notification triggers, and engagement-driven reward loops that exploit adolescent dopamine systems. The legislation also requires technology companies to scientifically demonstrate that their services are safe before deploying them to young users.
The Commission draft formalises the expert panel’s recommendation to shift the burden of proof regarding compliance onto platform operators, via administrative mechanisms. Platforms classified as “Very Large Online Platforms” under EU law must submit plans for public authority approval thirty days before rolling out any new service or feature.
Privacy tooling, and the loopholes that remain
To address privacy concerns, the draft requires platforms to use an open-source EU age verification tool built on zero-knowledge cryptographic proofs, allowing users to verify their age threshold without disclosing their identity or exact birthdate. Legal experts such as Christiane Wendehorst from the University of Vienna warn that critical circumvention loopholes remain, as teenagers could easily bypass one-off checks by registering under the credentials of older siblings or friends.
The proposal cites recent Eurobarometer data showing European teenagers currently average four and a half hours online on school days, raising public health concerns about sleep disruption, anxiety, and exposure to harmful algorithmic content. The leaked draft indicates the proposal targets escalating youth mental health crises linked to addictive platform architecture and excessive daily screen time.
The strategic context
The announcement follows a historic multi-billion dollar settlement in the United States between Meta and state attorneys general over claims that its platform features deliberately harm minors and lead to their addiction. If adopted, the initiative would set a precedent as the first binding supranational agreement establishing unified digital health and age-restriction standards for minors.
What to watch next is whether the Commission’s stricter age-fifteen threshold survives scrutiny in the European Parliament and among member states, and whether the open-source age verification tool proves robust enough to close the circumvention gaps Wendehorst has identified.
