The EU launches an online age verification app. Pilot project in five Member States (including Italy)

Brussels – Italy, France, Spain, Greece, and Denmark will be the first five EU countries to test the online age verification app prototype developed and presented today (July 14) by the European Commission. Together with the adoption of the app, Brussels also points platforms in the direction of ways to limit the visibility of younger people’s accounts on social networks, thereby protecting them from the risk of abuse. 

“Platforms no longer have any excuse to continue to implement practices that put children at risk,” exulted the Executive Vice-President for Technological Sovereignty and Security, Henna Virkkunen, when presenting the guidelines on child protection, provided for in the European Digital Services Act (DSA). According to the pilot project, users in the five member states will need to activate an app—once it becomes available nationwide—that will directly verify their age. In this way, online platforms will only receive proof of whether the user is of age, without having to request personal data themselves. “The issuing and submission processes will be handled by separate entities, ensuring privacy,” the European Commission assures. Furthermore, the provider of the proof “will not be informed of the services in which it is used.”

Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, and Spain are among the countries that are pushing Brussels to reflect on the need to set a digital age at the European level, and will be the first to adopt the prototype with a view to its integration into national digital wallets—to be introduced by the end of 2026—or the publication of a customised national age-verification app on app stores. In parallel, Brussels will launch extensive tests with online platforms, including pornographic and adult content sites. Technically, the European Commission suggests that the use of such an app can go much further and be extended to, for example, the purchase of alcohol. “Member States may decide to do so when adapting it to their national context or at a later stage,” reads a note from the EU executive. 

Other aspects touched upon by the guidelines released today include platform design that creates addiction in users, cyberbullying, harmful content, and unwanted contact from strangers. According to the Commission, confirmation ticks for reading messages (or even more so ‘streaks‘, features of some social platforms that reward the posting of consecutive content), trigger addictive behaviour, to which minors are “particularly vulnerable”. Platforms should also prohibit accounts from downloading or copying via screenshots content posted by underage users to prevent the “unwanted dissemination of sexualised or intimate content.” 

Then there is the issue of exposure to harmful content, often proposed by the platforms’ recommendation algorithms. Finally, Brussels suggested that platforms should default the accounts of minors as private, not visible to users who are not part of their friends list, to avoid the risk of them being contacted by strangers online.