Protection of Minors Online – European Parliament Report 2025/2060(INI)

AdoptedText.pdf

On 26 November 2025, the European Parliament adopted its own-initiative resolution on the protection of minors online (2025/2060(INI)) in plenary in Strasbourg. The text, steered by rapporteur Christel Schaldemose (S&D, Denmark) in the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee (IMCO), was approved by 483 votes in favour, 92 against and 86 abstentions.

The plenary vote followed a committee report adopted in IMCO on 16 October 2025 and a full plenary debate on 25 November 2025, before the final vote the next day. Although non-legislative and not directly binding on Member States or platforms, the resolution sets out Parliament’s political priorities and calls on the European Commission to follow up with concrete legislative and enforcement action.

At the core of the resolution is a call for a harmonised EU “digital minimum age” of 16 for access to social media, video-sharing platforms and AI companions, with 13 as an absolute minimum age below which access should not be allowed. Teenagers aged 13 to 16 would only be able to use such services with parental consent. Parliament links these age limits to growing concern about minors’ mental health, problematic smartphone use and exposure to harmful or addictive online environments.

MEPs also call for stricter enforcement of the Digital Services Act, backed up by fines, possible bans on non-compliant services and potential personal liability for senior managers in cases of serious and repeated breaches relating to the protection of minors. The resolution asks the Commission to move quickly on privacy-preserving age-assurance and age-verification tools, including an EU age-verification app and use of the European Digital Identity (eID) wallet, while stressing that platforms remain responsible for ensuring services are safe and age-appropriate by design.

To address addictive and manipulative design, Parliament supports bans on engagement-based recommender algorithms for minors, loot boxes and other gambling-like game mechanics, and a default disabling or banning of the most addictive features for under-18s (such as infinite scroll, autoplay, pull-to-refresh and reward loops). MEPs further call for action on persuasive technologies, including targeted advertising to minors, influencer marketing, dark patterns and “kidfluencing”, and urge dedicated rules on these practices under the forthcoming Digital Fairness Act.

Finally, the resolution highlights emerging risks from generative AI, including deepfakes, companionship chatbots, AI agents and AI-powered “nudity apps” that can create non-consensual manipulated images. Parliament calls for robust enforcement of the AI Act and other EU digital laws to ensure a high level of protection for children across all online services. The plenary debate and the post-vote press conference (embedded below on this page) provide additional context on political reactions and implementation challenges.

You can find the full information on the voting results in this pdf: votes.pdf.

Below you will find past debates from the Parliament’s IMCO committee, the first (25 June 2025) discusses the initial draft proposal, the second (24 September 2025) discusses amendments.