EU Child-Safety Panel Delivers Report

The co-chairs of the European Commission’s Special Panel on child safety online have published and presented their final report, “Child Safety Online: Protecting and Empowering Minors in a Digital World”, to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

The Commission-established panel brought together experts, practitioners and youth and parent representatives to assess online risks to minors and potential age restrictions for social media. Although independent, the report is intended to inform future EU action and explicitly identifies the Digital Fairness Act and the revision of the Consumer Protection Cooperation Regulation as key legislative opportunities. The DFA is expected to be highly influenced by the report.

Some recommendations include:

• A harmonised EU-wide access restriction below 13 for “social media+”, expressly including AI companions, with access permitted only under parental supervision or for educational purposes. Member States could impose higher thresholds from age 13.

• Harmonised and adaptable design rules covering infinite scrolling, autoplay, push notifications and problematic personalised recommender systems.

• A reversal of the burden of proof: providers should demonstrate that services and features are safe for minors before making them accessible; adult features should remain disabled until effective age assurance.

• Age assurance should avoid processing identity documents or biometric data for age estimation, with zero-knowledge proofs specifically recommended to prevent identification and tracking.

• The DFA should establish a baseline applicable across apps, video games, streaming, e-commerce and other commercial services, not only large platforms. The report also links addictive design to potential product-defect liability, including medically recognised mental harm.