European Commission wants to ban social media for children under 13

In its speech on the State of the Union in the European Parliament, Ursula Von der Leyen advanced that the European Commission will present on Thursday the EU Children's Act, which aims to protect children from dangerous content on the Internet, with different approaches to age.

“ Each age has its own sensitivities. Therefore, each will have its own specific level of protection,” he said to MEPs.

The new legislation aims to ban children under the age of 13 from accessing social networks and from having personal accounts up to the age of 15, to prevent minors from being “attracted to increasingly extreme content,” he said.

“ This means that, from 13 to 15 years old, only mini-accounts will be allowed, created and supervised by parents, with limited resources and time constraints,” the President of the Commission explained, stating that the proposal was drawn up on the basis of talks with a special panel of experts and young people, as well as observations of what was done in other countries, particularly Australia.

On the other hand, online platforms that produce content for children between the ages of 15 and 18 should adopt a safe design.

“We don’t have to accept addictive resources. We don't have to accept that pictures of girls are used for sexualized images generated by artificial intelligence. Therefore, we are inverting the burden of proof,” said Ursula Von der Leyen.

Internet platforms will also be subject to other measures because “the addictive design harms everyone”, he said.

For this reason, the Commission will present in autumn the Digital Equity Act which aims to combat the interface and architecture techniques created by companies to retain the user's attention for as long as possible, stimulating compulsive use.

Several countries have already implemented or passed laws to prohibit or restrict access of children and adolescents to social networks in order to protect the mental health of young people against the harmful effects of algorithms.

The first country where this ban was imposed on children under 16 was Australia, but France and Indonesia followed the same path and the United Kingdom scheduled the entry into force of the restriction for next year.

In Portugal, as in Spain, Norway, Denmark, Italy and Austria, similar legislation is being prepared or debated.

In the Portuguese case, a bill to restrict the free access of children under 16 years of age to social networks was presented by the PSD, and approved in general also by the PS, PAN and JPP, and the final text in the specialty should be voted in October.