A special expert panel has delivered its report on protecting children online to the European Commission, recommending harmonised age limits for children on social media across the European Union. According to the Commission, the findings were presented in Brussels and are intended to guide how the bloc responds to growing concern about the impact of digital platforms on young people, at a moment when the issue has moved to the top of the political agenda in several member states.
The work was set in motion earlier this year. According to the Commission, President Ursula von der Leyen commissioned the special panel on child safety online to gather expertise on how to shield children from the risks of the digital world, and the panel's two co-chairs formally handed over the report, which von der Leyen described as the evidence the bloc had been waiting for as it prepares to legislate.
At the heart of the recommendations is a common age threshold. According to the report, the panel calls for an EU-wide harmonised age restriction on access to what it terms social media plus for children under the age of thirteen, a category defined to include not only social media itself but also other providers with age-inappropriate and addictive features that can draw children in and keep them online.
The panel also set out a staged approach tailored to different stages of childhood. According to the report, there should be no screens at all for children up to the age of three, while younger children before puberty should only be online when accompanied by parents, caregivers or teachers and for a limited time. For adolescents between thirteen and eighteen, the panel recommends increasingly independent access that must nonetheless remain safe by design or safe by default.
A central theme running through both the report and the Commission's response is that responsibility should sit with the platforms rather than with families. According to von der Leyen, the companies were the architects of these systems and must now prove that their services do no harm, in the same way that carmakers must make their vehicles safe. The panel described this as shifting the burden of proof onto the providers, who would have to demonstrate that their content is age-appropriate and safe before gaining access to children.
The Commission pointed to tools it says are already in place or in preparation. According to von der Leyen, the Digital Services Act has allowed the bloc to take strong action against addictive design features, including measures directed at TikTok and Meta, while an age verification app that is described as easy to use, privacy-preserving and open source is being offered as one way to put more control back into the hands of parents.
Officials framed the recommendations against the scale of children's exposure online. According to the Commission, young people across Europe now spend four to six hours a day on screens, and almost sixty percent of young children have experienced emotional and psychosocial problems online, from loss of sleep and anxiety to cyberbullying and exposure to harmful content. The Commission said it will carefully review the report and present a proposal after the summer, describing the moment as a rare window of opportunity to act.