The European Commission announced the next steps in its implementation of more stringent restrictions on how young people can access social media apps, with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen releasing an initial response to a new investigation on Sunday.
As per von der Leyen: “The data reveal the facts. Across Europe, young people now spend four to six hours per day on screens. Six hours every day — this adds up to twenty years of their life. At the same time, across Europe, almost 60% of young children have experienced emotional or psychosocial problems online.”
Von der Leyen said the harms of social media were clear, and added that social media apps were not designed with kids’ wellbeing in mind.
And while she agreed that it should ultimately be up to parents to decide when children get their first smartphones, von der Leyen said the consensus is that there needs to be a clear age limit on children regarding social media.
“The status quo, a world where we continue to allow big tech unrestricted access to our children, will only consign another generation to more mental harm, addiction and misery,” von der Leyen said. She also said it’s not about whether children can access social media. “It is about whether and when social media can access our children. The question is no longer if children face risks online, but what can we do to give children a safer start online.”
Von der Leyen said that the EU’s new age verification app will help to address this challenge, and will provide a more uniform way to confirm each social media user’s identity and age.
This, in combination with new age restrictions, will ideally help to limit harms and ensure that the EU’s approach to teen social media restrictions will be effective.
In September, as part of her State of the Union address, von der Leyen announced a plan to commission a panel of experts to explore the EU’s best pathway forward for Europe in regards to social media restrictions for teens, citing Australia’s model as an example.
In that speech, von der Leyen outlined her concerns regarding the impacts of social media, and said “parents, not algorithms, should be raising our children.”
The Commission’s initial report from the group will now help to inform the future of social media policy in the region.
At this stage, it seems likely that the EU will eventually enact an under-16 social media age restriction, though some member states are pushing for that threshold to be lowered to under-15.
For context, Australia banned all teens under the age of 16 from using social media platforms, though early data suggested that the majority of young teens still accessed social media apps due to flaws in the detection process. The U.K. is planning to ban children under-16 from social media as well, beginning next year. Meanwhile, Turkey also enacted a ban on social media for users under 15.
Many other regions are considering similar restrictions, though a broader set of rules covering the entire EU could have a bigger impact on usage. That’s especially true if the EU’s new age verification process successfully acts as a barrier to entry.
But is this the right solution?
Some experts have argued that blocking certain apps and platforms won’t be effective because kids will either sidestep barriers to entry, or switch to other, potentially less safe, apps and tools.
Online interaction is now such a central part of how young people connect that they’re going to find ways to use them, which could mean that social media bans simply won’t work as intended.
But the European Commission now has the data and the insight it needs to assess the best way forward. It does sound like broader restrictions are coming as a result.
