BRUSSELS — The European Commission is open to the idea that countries will set their own minimum ages for social media use, according to draft guidelines seen by POLITICO.
The guidelines being finalized by the Commission say how platforms should implement the provisions of the Digital Services Act (DSA) related to minors’ protection.
The latest draft, circulated last week and seen by POLITICO, references the possibility of national laws that prescribe “a minimum age to access certain products or services” on platforms, including social media, in a list of circumstances under which platforms should implement age verification.
The reference appears to be an acknowledgement that bans are possible.
As EU countries, chief among them France, plow ahead with national measures to restrict children’s access to social media such as TikTok and Instagram, whether these measures are compatible with the DSA is the subject of debate.
Industry argues national measures increase fragmentation and conflict with the DSA, the EU’s landmark social media regulation that the Commission is responsible for enforcing.
Another addition to the draft tries to limit the risk of fragmentation and users’ disruption by giving more freedom to social media providers as to what measures they use to ascertain users’ age. Platforms should be allowed to use age estimation even if they can prove that it provides comparable results to verification measures, the draft says.
Age verification measures determine users’ age with a high degree of certainty, such as through the use of government IDs or bank cards, as opposed to age estimation techniques which only establish if a user is “likely to be of a certain age, to fall within a certain age range, or to be over or under a certain age,” the guidelines note.
The latest draft was first reported by Contexte. A final version of the guidelines is expected to be published before the summer break.
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