Social media and children: European Parliament’s Culture Committee says “companies should guarantee safety”

Brussels – To reverse the paradigm in which people are expected to adapt to online platforms, and ensure that social media adapts to the real world. This is the aim of Today’s vote (14 July) in the European Parliament’s Committee on Culture: in other words, to turn the existing situation 180 degrees, as “companies should guarantee that the use of social media and the digital environment is safe, particularly for children and young people”, according to the press release issued following the vote.

This phenomenon is now well established and very real: According to Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, in 2024, up to 97 per cent of young Europeans used the internet daily. Over 80 per cent of young people in the European Union access social media every day, while children and young people aged 9 to 16 spend an average of 3 hours a day online. Furthermore, according to the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), the time spent on social networks has more than doubled since 2010. At the same time, several studies have highlighted the negative effects of excessive digital exposure on the psychological well-being of young people.

The text approved by the European Parliament’s Committee on Culture, with 17 votes in favour, three against, and four abstentions, now calls for a change in approach: it should not be users, and in particular children, who have to adapt to the platforms’ logic, but it is the platforms that must be designed to be safer. MEPs are calling for “better enforcement of existing European rules” and stress that the online environment “must be governed by the principles of privacy-by-design and safety-by-default, age-appropriate design, and algorithmic transparency.”

One of the text’s main targets is what is known as persuasive design: those platform features designed to keep users online for as long as possible, such as infinite scrolling of content (infinite scroll), autoplay videos, constant notifications, and highly personalised recommendation systems. According to MEPs, these features can have a particularly negative impact on children and should be subject to greater restrictions, including a ban on the most harmful practices. The parliamentary committee is also calling for platforms to introduce risk-based recommendation systems and for personal liability to be established in the event of serious and persistent breaches of child protection rules.

The issue of platform design is already a key focus for the European Commission. Under the Digital Services Act (DSA), Brussels opened an investigation against Facebook and Instagram features, believing that some of Meta’s design choices did not adequately conisder the risks to users’ physical and mental wellbeing, including those of children and vulnerable adults. The focus is on features such as infinite scrolling, autoplay, push notifications, and personalised recommendation systems. For the Commission, safeguarding the mental health of European citizens must be a priority for digital platforms.

Among the proposals approved by the Culture Committee is the introduction of a possible “youth mode”, which would block targeted advertising and restrict features designed to encourage compulsive use. MEPs are also calling for “greater transparency on algorithms” so that users can understand why certain content is recommended, removed, or made less visible. The text also addresses the role of influencers, calling for a European code of conduct and a common definition of influencer marketing to protect minors from phenomena such as kidfluencing, that is, the involvement of children as creators of commercial content, and sharenting, the online sharing of children’s lives by parents.

Finally, one chapter deals with artificial intelligence. MEPs are proposing mandatory ethical standards for “AI companions”, systems that simulate virtual friendships, to prevent the manipulation of children’s emotional vulnerability. They are also calling for greater transparency regarding the data used to train AI models and an explicit ban on systems capable of generating realistic sexual images or videos of identifiable individuals without their consent, or synthetic material depicting child sexual abuse.

The rapporteur for the text approved by the Committee on Culture, the Italian Sandro Ruotolo (PD, S&D), explained that the vote is “just the start of the work,” stressing that Europe has built “one of the most advanced regulatory systems in the world,” but must now demonstrate that it can apply it in a rapidly evolving sector. According to Ruotolo, “the responsibility for the safety of children and young people must lie first and foremost with those who design and manage digital platforms.”

 This issue is set to remain a key focus in the coming months. “After the summer,” the European Commission will present a plan dedicated to social media and the protection of children online, which is also expected to address age limits and the gradual granting of access to platforms based on users’ maturity. The aim is to create a digital environment in which the protection of children is not left solely to families’ ability to monitor their use of technology but becomes a fundamental principle that underpins the design of online services.