EU Commission Proposes Banning Under-13s From Social Media

TL;DR

• The European Commission has proposed a new EU law, the KIDS Act, to control how social media, video and AI chat apps treat users under 18.
• It would ban children under 13 from social media outright and let 13- and 14-year-olds in only through a parent-supervised account capped at one hour a day.
• Platforms would have to switch off features like autoplay and streaks for minors, disable AI companion chatbots for them by default, and check ages with certified tools instead of a typed-in birthdate.
• It is only a proposal: the European Parliament and EU governments must still negotiate and agree a final text before any of this becomes law, and no date has been set for that.

What happened

On 17 September 2026, the European Commission published a legislative proposal called the KIDS Act, aimed at restricting how social media platforms handle users under 18 across the European Union. The unveiling came one day after Commission President Ursula von der Leyen referenced the plan in her State of the Union address, according to IAPP, the International Association of Privacy Professionals.

The proposal would bar children under 13 from social media platforms entirely and require platforms to offer parental control tools. It would also set 15 as the EU-wide minimum age at which a child can create and run their own social media or video-sharing account, replacing the differing age rules currently set by individual member states. In between, 13- and 14-year-olds could use social media only through a mini account supervised by a parent, limited to one hour of use per day, with the parent required to approve who the child is in contact with.

The proposal also targets specific design features. Platforms would have to remove or disable, for minors, autoplay and infinite scroll, notifications designed to pull users back, rewards for posting to large audiences, and streak mechanics that penalize users for not returning daily. AI companion chatbots designed to simulate human relationships would have to be disabled by default for minors, and could not be designed to create emotional dependency.

On age checks, the proposal would require verification to be certified rather than self-declared, using what the Commission describes as zero-knowledge proof technology — a method it says confirms a user’s age without letting the platform identify, locate, track or profile them. Each EU member state would have to offer at least one free verification method. Platforms would also have to re-check the ages of existing account holders within six months and disable accounts whose age cannot be verified.

The toughest obligations fall on the largest platforms. Those with more than 45 million monthly active users in the EU would have to submit compliance plans, checked by independent auditors paid for by the platforms themselves, before children could use their services. For platforms the Commission directly supervises, an expedited enforcement process would require preliminary findings within 30 days and a final decision targeted within 90 days. Penalties for non-compliance could reach 6% of a platform’s total worldwide annual turnover.

Announcing the plan, von der Leyen said: “Our KIDS Act is reversing the burden of proof - it is for platforms to show they are safe by design.” (European Commission) Alongside the legal text, the Commission also published a policy communication on child safety online and a staff working document analyzing the proposal’s impact.

What this means (and what it does not)

The proposal would shift more of the compliance work onto platforms themselves, from age-checking to auditing to removing specific design features, and backs that with fines tied to global revenue rather than a fixed sum. CCIA Europe, a trade association whose members include Meta, Google and Amazon and which would absorb these compliance costs, has raised two objections: its senior vice president, Daniel Friedlaender, said “collecting age information, identity credentials, and data linking children with parents…would undoubtedly create an attractive target for cybercriminals,” and colleague Mitchell Rutledge criticized the proposal for leaving key technical standards undefined and pushed to later implementing rules. On the other side, digital-rights group European Digital Rights, represented by Simeon de Brouwer, argued platforms — not children — should have to prove their services are safe, rather than requiring children to prove they are old enough to use them. A Commission-commissioned Eurobarometer survey, cited by The Record, found that 92% of Europeans rank stronger protection of children’s safety online as a top policy priority.

What this does not mean is that any of this is settled or in force. It is a proposal only: under the EU’s process, the European Parliament and the Council of the EU (representing member governments) must still examine, negotiate and agree a final text before it can become binding law. It should also not be confused with a separate, earlier step: on 26 November 2025, the European Parliament adopted a non-binding resolution on protecting minors online by 483 votes to 82, a different procedure that did not itself create legal obligations and is distinct from this Commission proposal.

What we still do not know

No source establishes a target date for the Parliament and Council to finish negotiating the text, so there is no timeline for when — or whether in this form — the KIDS Act could take effect. It is also unclear what date the within six months deadline for re-checking existing users’ ages would run from: publication, the law’s entry into force, or a later national transposition date. The exact technical criteria for certifying the zero-knowledge proof age-verification method, and which vendors could meet them, are not detailed in the sources reviewed; that description of the technology is the Commission’s own characterization and has not been independently tested or audited according to any source found. It is likewise unclear whether the Commission’s own planned EU age-verification app would be ready in time to serve as the free option each member state must offer, and how enforcement would work for platforms below the 45-million-user threshold beyond a general reference to national regulators.