Can Brussels prohibit minors under 13 years old from accessing social networks?

BrusselsBrussels wants to protect minors from excessive exposure to social media. The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced this Wednesday that access to these platforms will be prohibited for those under 13 and that its use will be limited for those under 15. As she announced during the State of the Union address in Strasbourg, the community executive will propose that those under 13 years of age cannot access "any social network" and that until the age of 15 they can only have accounts with limited functions, if they have parental authorization, and with a time limit of one hour per day.

The risks exposed by Von der Leyen became clear when she explained the case of Oléa, a 14-year-old Belgian girl who committed suicide after suffering online harassment. "I am convinced that without these omnipresent networks my daughter would still be here," said the German leader, paraphrasing the minor's mother. With the new legislation, it will be the technology companies that will have to "prove that they are safe." "It is not about whether our minors access social media or not. It is about when and how we allow social media to access minors," she stated.

The Commission will present this Thursday the European law for the protection of children on the internet, dubbed EU Kids Act. The regulation must resolve several questions about how this prohibition will be put into practice. The most relevant is what mechanism will be proposed to carry out an effective verification of the age of access to the platforms. There are several options on the table.

One is that the verification be linked to some digital identification tool, as stated in the report of the panel of experts that the Commission commissioned in March. Another possibility is the platforms' age estimation systems, which calculate a probable age based on other signals. It will also be necessary to see what mechanisms it proposes to attribute responsibility to the executives of the platforms in case of infractions.

Also on YouTube and chatbots

The experts consulted by Brussels insisted that any mechanism must meet strict privacy standards. Under no circumstances should it process identity documents or biometric data, and it must prevent both the platform and the verification provider from being able to identify or track user information. According to sources participating in the negotiation of the text, the future legislation could go beyond social networks and also include video-on-demand platforms such as YouTube and the so-called AI colleagues, that is to say, chatbots based on artificial intelligence.

The advanced measure by Von der Leyen is more restrictive than the one proposed by the Spanish government, who in February announced that he would ban access to social media for minors under 16, and also thatwhich was proposed by the French government, which established the restriction starting at 15. The Spanish president himself, Pedro Sánchez, reacted this Wednesday to the announcement from the President of the European Commission: "A year ago, the governments of France and Spain proposed establishing a minimum age to access social networks," he boasted, and he underlined that it sends a clear message to the "techno-oligarchs": "Childhood is not to be destroyed by algorithms or economic interests."