The European Commission on Thursday proposed setting 15 as the minimum age for teenagers across the EU to open their own social media accounts.
Children under 13 would not be allowed to have social media accounts, while 13- and 14-year-olds could use limited accounts set up and supervised by a parent or guardian. Teenagers could open their own accounts from 15.
Under-aged three and lower would have no access at all, while children between three and 13 could have access only to specially designed child-friendly services meeting strict safety standards.
“Today, our children are engaging with the most sophisticated technologies ever created. Technology that was never created with their wellbeing in mind,” Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.
Our KIDS Act is reversing the burden of proof – it is for platforms to show they are safe by design. And we put parents back in the driving seat, giving them the tools to help their children navigate a safer online world,” she said.
Accounts used by 13- and 14-year-olds would have to keep parental tools active, with a daily time limit of no more than one hour and a requirement for parental approval of contacts.
Platforms covered by the rules would have to make their services safer by design, with restrictions on features that encourage excessive or compulsive use, safer default settings, limits on unsolicited contact from strangers and greater user control over recommender systems.
For minors, the proposal would prohibit features including infinite scrolling without meaningful breaks, notifications designed to draw children back to a service and other mechanisms intended to encourage excessive use.
Recommender systems would have to be designed around safety, quality and mental health rather than engagement.
The rules would extend beyond conventional social media to video-sharing platforms, online games and AI chatbots and companions.
The Commission calls this broader category “Social Media+”, covering services that offer mental-health or personal-development guidance to minors.
Services built for education, those operated by public authorities, and industrial or office-oriented AI products would fall outside the rules, while AI systems aimed at minors would face additional safeguards, including restrictions on designs that could encourage emotional dependency.
Social media and video-sharing services covered by the age rules would have to verify users’ ages by methods stronger than a self-reported date of birth, with privacy-preserving options available, including an EU age-verification application.
Within six months of the legislation becoming applicable, platforms would also have to check existing accounts and disable those belonging to users under 15 or whose age could not be established.
The Commission said checks would be proportionate, meaning an account that has existed for many years or one linked to a credit card would not necessarily face the same blanket re-verification as a new sign-up.
Very large platforms with at least 45 million monthly active users in the EU would have to submit compliance plans and demonstrate, through independent audits paid for by the companies, that they would meet the requirements before their services came into contact with children.
The Commission would have 30 days to assess those plans and no new feature could launch without a positive opinion from Brussels, while platforms would also need vetting by public authorities before being made available to minors.
Brussels said the proposal answers concerns about children’s exposure to harmful online content, excessive use, and services built to maximise attention.
it pointed to a 2026 Eurobarometer survey that found teenagers spend an average of 4.5 hours online on school days and 6.1 hours at weekends, and that children who started social media before 10 report significantly more weekend screen time than those who started after 14.
OECD PISA 2025 results tied declining basic skills to digital distraction. Other figures show harmful content already reaching one child in four online, and some form of online sexual solicitation reaching one child in four before 18.
EU officials argued tools, including the Digital Services Act, GDPR, and the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, do not go far enough because none sets a minimum age or bans addictive design outright. It also pointed to the growing role of artificial intelligence in children’s online lives, including AI-generated deepfakes and advice from AI chatbots.
National legislation on children’s social media use is already being prepared or negotiated in 17 EU member states, the Commission said, with its proposal intended to replace that patchwork with common rules across the bloc.
Beyond the KIDS Act, the Commission signaled a broader package: a separate Digital Fairness Act, a revision of the Consumer Protection Cooperation Regulation, a revision of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, an Action Plan on protecting children from crime, and an education package to support digital and AI literacy in schools.
