Impact of Social Media and the Online Environment on Young People – European Parliament Report 2025/2081(INI)

On 8 May 2025, the European Parliament opened the own-initiative procedure on the impact of social media and the online environment on young people (2025/2081(INI)). The file is being handled by the Culture and Education Committee (CULT), with Sandro Ruotolo (S&D) as rapporteur.

The first CULT draft report was published on 10 September 2025. It frames the issue around the scale of young people’s online exposure, pointing to high screen time, the rise of daily social media use, and the range of harms young users can face online, including cyberbullying, sexualised content, disinformation, body image pressures, self-harm content and manipulative advertising. The explanatory statement also stresses that social media can offer benefits, including creativity, peer support and civic participation, while arguing that those opportunities need to be matched by stronger safeguards.

The draft report places the debate firmly within the wider EU digital rulebook. It calls for greater coherence between the GDPR, the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, the Digital Services Act, the AI Act and the forthcoming Digital Fairness Act. It also argues that the next Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) revision should examine whether major video-sharing platforms, influencers and professional content creators are fully covered by rules on advertising transparency and the protection of minors. On AI, the text says that youth-facing systems such as chatbots, personalisation engines and content filters create new risks linked to bias, manipulation and privacy, and that the AI Act needs to be enforced accordingly.

On substance, the draft report backs privacy-respecting age assurance linked to the EU Digital Identity Wallet, stronger parental controls, proactive moderation and default safety measures on platforms, and more transparency around influencer marketing aimed at minors. It also highlights cyberbullying prevention, digital and media literacy, algorithmic transparency, gender-sensitive safeguards for girls and young women, and a review of whether the BIK+ strategy is keeping pace with newer risks such as persuasive design and algorithmic harms.