Teenagers’ use of social media and digital services is a popular subject for politicians the world over, and the European Union is no exception. Some countries are weighing bans up to the age of 16, while others lean toward more modest approaches with lower thresholds. Digitally advanced Estonia, by contrast, openly rejects the idea of an EU-wide minimum age, stressing instead the importance of digital literacy among minors, teachers, and parents, along with stronger enforcement of existing laws such as the Digital Services Act.
A few weeks ago, a special expert panel led by Professor Jörg M. Fegert and Dr Maria Melchior presented a report on child safety online with a set of actionable recommendations. The report is broadly balanced and recognises that not all minors under 18 should be treated alike, but it leaves considerable room for interpretation. In doing so, it echoes the Commission’s emphasis on new platform obligations while relying largely on soft measures where parental involvement is concerned.
Existing Legal Frameworks at Work
At the member state level, the debate tends to be fairly simplistic, centred mostly on the minimum age of use for social media and other digital services. France, for instance, has recently banned smartphones in schools. The topic is easy to communicate and pays political dividends, but the technical detail and institutional capacity needed to enforce such rules rarely feature in the conversation.
Protecting minors online is neither a new concern at the EU level nor a neglected one. The bloc has already spread numerous provisions across a range of laws. The Digital Services Act is used to assess platform design features that may be harmful, the General Data Protection Regulation sets out safeguards for children’s personal data and consent, and the Audiovisual Media Services Directive was recently expanded to cover new forms of audiovisual content and video-sharing platforms.
The list runs on to include the Artificial Intelligence Act, the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, the Consumer Rights Directive, the Unfair Contract Terms Directive, the General Product Safety Regulation, the Product Liability Directive, the Political Advertising Regulation, the heavily criticised Chat Control 1.0 and proposals for Chat Control 2.0, alongside many further guidelines, cooperation mechanisms, strategies, political statements, and digital literacy programmes.
As with other debates on online consumer protection, the current discussion about minors leans toward adding new regulatory layers rather than better enforcing the rules already in place. To that end, the EU has launched an age-verification app, will likely soon propose an EU-wide minimum age for social media along with additional platform obligations, and is pushing for design requirements set in advance, such as a ban on infinite scrolling.
Complications: Bypassing, Data Security, and Fragmentation
The experience of the UK and Australia, where teenagers have circumvented local restrictions through means including VPNs or a move to fringe, less regulated platforms, has significantly complicated the political conversation. EU policymakers now have to weigh these real-world examples and design precautions to prevent a similar outcome in Europe.
So far the effort has fallen short. Earlier this year the Commission unveiled an age-verification app, but it drew criticism as unreliable, with reports that AI agents could bypass it “within minutes.” The EU must also respect European data protection and data minimisation principles, a concern sharpened by the rising number of data leaks across both private platforms and public services. On top of that, the patchwork of minimum-age rules among member states may make an EU-wide agreement harder to reach. Countries that have rushed to pass their own versions are likely to resist the panel’s recommendation to focus restrictions on minors under 13, pointing to the report’s own acknowledgement that some countries may prefer a higher threshold.
Building Resilience by Involving Parents and Caregivers
The report frames the safety of minors online as primarily the responsibility of social media and digital service providers, placing parents and caregivers in a secondary role. Providers, it says, retain primary responsibility for keeping minors safe on their services, while parents and caregivers have important roles in supervising children’s time online and guiding them through the risks they encounter.
There is truth in the idea that parental supervision naturally recedes as a child grows more autonomous and more influenced by peers. It is also true that parents sometimes lack the means, time, or digital literacy to use the parental control tools that already exist. But the cultural shift the Commission and many local politicians envision will only happen if regulation and literacy efforts are paired with stronger parental involvement, especially since parents themselves are sometimes the ones enabling rule-bypassing and handing their children unrestricted access to the digital world.
Data on European parents using parental controls is sparse, but a 2020 survey by the EU Kids Online Network found that, on average, only 22 percent of European parents used the available tools. French and Maltese parents were somewhat more engaged, while just 12 percent of Lithuanian parents and 14 percent of Czech parents did the same at the time.
The expert panel takes a relatively gentle approach to parental involvement, leaning on digital literacy, guidelines, and supportive tools. Yet meaningful cultural change usually calls for combining soft measures with hard obligations, and not only for digital platforms. While the EU maintains a comprehensive child protection framework enforced by local agencies, the current political debate offers few direct incentives or accountability mechanisms for parents. Without clearly defined parental responsibility to rein in excessive screen time, cyberbullying, and online abuse toward other children, many parents may stay passive, relying wholly on local or EU-wide rules rather than taking active ownership of their children’s digital well-being.
