Brussels Moves Toward a Social Media Age Limit as Doubts Pile Up

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Monday the EU will draw a minimum age for children on social media, with a formal proposal due after the summer. The push follows a report from her own special panel on child safety online, delivered in Brussels the same day. It stopped short of recommending a blanket ban like Australia’s, backing instead a tiered system that starts at 13.

That caution has numbers behind it. Three months into Australia’s under-16 ban, the policy meant to prove a hard line works, more than 85% of younger teens surveyed were still logging on regardless.

The Panel Rejects a Copy-Paste Ban

The special panel, made up of doctors, academics, youth representatives and parents, handed its findings to von der Leyen on Monday. It did not recommend a blanket ban on digital platforms, and von der Leyen did not back one either. Instead it described a category it calls “social media+”: networking platforms built around features designed to keep young users hooked.

• Social media+ – the panel’s term for platforms combining social networking with age-inappropriate design features such as infinite scrolling, autoplay and persistent notifications.

Professor Jörg Fegert, from the University of Ulm in Germany and a co-chair of the panel, put the recommendation plainly: “we would recommend an EU-wide harmonisation of an introduction of an age restriction for access to social media+ under the age of 13.” Dr Maria Melchior, the panel’s other co-chair, framed the stakes this way: “we are all aware of the extraordinary opportunities that technology brings us but we also know that the potential dangers are just as great.”

Von der Leyen leaned on the same logic in her own remarks. “Social media is not a toy,” she told reporters in Brussels.

The status quo, a world where we continue to allow big tech unrestricted access to our children, will only consign another generation to more mental harm, addiction and misery.

She has framed the debate as one of timing rather than access altogether, telling reporters the real question is “whether and when social media can access our children.” Asked to define which apps would fall under the new rules, she offered a shorthand: “So think of it as social media plus.”

Parliament Already Wants 16

The Commission is not starting from scratch. In November 2025, MEPs adopted a non-legislative report passed 483 votes to 92, proposing a harmonised EU digital minimum age of 16 for social media, video-sharing platforms and AI companions, while still allowing 13 to 16 year olds access with parental consent.

The Parliament built its case on the 2025 Eurobarometer survey, the EU’s own polling arm. The numbers explain why this has become politically unavoidable.

• 97% of young Europeans say they go online every day
• 78% of 13 to 17 year olds check their devices at least hourly
• 1 in 4 minors show smartphone use patterns that mirror addiction
• 92% of Europeans want more effective ways to restrict age-inappropriate content

Not every part of that generation is leaning into the scroll, though. Demand for digital detox holidays has been reshaping campsites across Europe this summer, a voluntary counter-trend running alongside the legislative one.

Australia’s Numbers Complicate the Case for a Hard Line

Australia banned social media accounts for under-16s in December 2025, becoming the first country to try it at national scale. Researchers at the University of Newcastle tracked what happened next, surveying 408 adolescents aged 12 to 17 in New South Wales before the law took effect and again three months later, in a study published in The BMJ.

More than 85% of under-16 respondents were still using the covered platforms at follow-up, mostly through their own accounts. Daily use held steady among 12 and 13 year olds, dipped modestly among 14 and 15 year olds, and actually rose among those 16 and older.

Dr Amrit Kaur Purba, an assistant professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, wrote in an accompanying editorial that the results describe “a partially implemented policy, one in which the mechanism intended to restrict access was not reliably activated.”

A separate poll of 1,050 Australian 12 to 15 year olds, run by YouthInsight for the Molly Rose Foundation, found three in five kept access to an account they held before the ban, including 53% of prior TikTok and YouTube users and 52% of Instagram users. Andy Burrows, the foundation’s chief executive, said the findings “raise major questions about the effectiveness of Australia’s social media ban and show it would be a high stakes gamble for the UK to follow suit now.”

Australia’s own eSafety Commissioner has echoed the concern, reporting that seven in 10 children kept banned accounts active on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok. The workarounds were rarely sophisticated:

• Entering a false birthdate to pass a self-declared age check
• Using a VPN to make the account appear to log in from another country
• Borrowing an older sibling’s or friend’s existing account
• Presenting false documents or fooling facial-recognition checks

Most children did not even need those tricks. The research found platforms had simply failed to identify and remove a majority of underage accounts in the first place.

Where the 27 Member States Disagree

Brussels is trying to write one rule for a bloc that is already writing 27 different ones. As of May 2026, 23 of the 27 member states were weighing national legislation to restrict or forbid minors’ access to social media, according to a tracker maintained by the policy group Interface.

That last commitment, the Jutland Declaration, is a non-binding pledge signed in October 2025 to pursue privacy-preserving age verification and work toward a common “digital legal age.” Estonia and Belgium are the only two member states that never signed it.

Belgium Cannot Agree With Itself Either

Belgium is the clearest miniature of the EU’s whole problem. Responsibility for the issue sits with the country’s regional governments, while federal digitisation minister Vanessa Matz has been trying to broker a single national position. A draft bill had been expected to reach the government this summer, but the wait for the Commission’s own recommendations has pushed the talks back.

The regions are not waiting together.

Flanders wants a ban up to age 13. The Wallonia-Brussels Federation is proposing 15 instead. Belgium’s own Superior Health Council opposes a hard ban altogether.

In Flanders, media minister Cieltje Van Achter is pushing for the stricter cutoff. In the French-speaking Wallonia-Brussels Federation, media minister Jacqueline Galant has floated 15 as the limit. Belgium’s Superior Health Council, in advice issued last December, said no network should be open to under-13s without parental consent, but for 13 to 16 year olds it recommended support and school-based media literacy over prohibition, plus an independent audit centre to check platform practices.

Child Focus chief executive Nel Broothaerts made a related warning in an opinion piece in June 2025: banning minors outright, she wrote, risks creating a false sense of security and pushing young people toward unregulated corners of the internet with no oversight at all. The Higher Council for Media Education reached a similar conclusion in a July 2025 report, opposing a ban and citing both the rights implications of age-verification systems and the thin scientific evidence tying social media use directly to worsening mental health.

Who Enforces Any of This?

Nobody, in any binding way, not yet. The Commission is building its own age verification app, but checking ages would fall to national regulators and platforms EU officials have already accused of slow-walking existing rules, and Brussels has not settled how compliance would actually be policed.

An App With a Bumpy Start

Von der Leyen has described the Commission’s in-development tool as “easy to use, privacy preserving, and open source,” designed to prove a user is old enough without revealing who they are. It is meant to put, in her words, “power back into the hands of parents.” The rollout so far has been rough, and enforcement questions, how it plugs into national ID systems, who audits it, remain unresolved.

The Commission is not waiting for the app to lean on platforms already. It told Facebook and Instagram last week to dismantle addictive features, following a similar warning sent to TikTok in February, and EU digital regulators have separately accused Instagram parent Meta Platforms of failing to keep underage users off the app entirely. Meta’s record on following through on its own safety toggles is already shaky elsewhere: the company pulled an AI image tool within 72 hours of backlash earlier this year, while leaving the underlying consent setting switched on. Consumer protection commissioner Michael McGrath has promised new rules on addictive design later this year, telling reporters that “digital markets are designed to capture attention and influence behaviour.” Critics, including the ten hidden dangers of mandatory age checks catalogued by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, argue that verification systems built to keep kids out end up collecting sensitive data from everyone else too.

Who Loses If the Line Is Wrong

The European Youth Forum has warned that cutting off access right as teenagers approach voting age contradicts the EU’s own push to get young people more engaged in democracy. The group also points to a narrower risk: for LGBTQIA+ young people, those with disabilities, rural teenagers and refugees, social platforms can be one of the few places offering community and support that a blanket ban would remove along with everything else.

What Comes After Summer

Von der Leyen has confirmed the Commission will review the panel’s findings before presenting legislative proposals once the summer break ends, with an indication of the plan’s likely shape expected around September and a formal legal text later in the year. Reconciling Spain’s push for 16, France’s 15, Germany’s tiered approach and Estonia’s outright opposition into one bloc-wide rule is the part nobody in Brussels has solved yet.

The World Health Organization and the OECD have each separately concluded there is no proven case that a total ban improves child wellbeing, urging digital literacy education and safer product design instead. Until Brussels turns its recommendations into an actual statute, member states keep legislating on their own separate clocks, and Australia’s next compliance figures will land before the EU has written a single line of binding text.

Frequently Asked Questions

What age will the EU set for social media access?

No fixed number is locked in yet. The special panel recommended 13 as a floor conditioned on safer platform design, Parliament has separately backed 16 with parental consent for younger teens, and the panel’s report explicitly leaves member states free to set a higher legal age if they choose.

Is Australia’s social media ban actually working?

Enforcement has lagged the law. Australia’s eSafety Commissioner reported that in-scope platforms had removed roughly 4.7 million accounts held by under-16s by mid-January 2026, a figure that passed five million by March, yet independent surveys still found most affected teenagers retained access.

Which EU countries already restrict social media for minors?

Draft laws have already been introduced in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain, while Romania’s version has cleared the Senate and awaits a vote in the lower house. France’s bill is the most legislatively advanced of any member state.

Will the EU require an age verification app?

The Commission is developing one, built to confirm a user is old enough without exposing their identity. Under the Commission’s own timeline, member states are encouraged to have workable age-verification tools available across the bloc by December 31, 2026.

What do critics say about banning minors from social media?

Youth advocacy groups argue the platforms are where political engagement starts young. A Eurobarometer survey found 65% of Europeans aged 15 to 24 say social media is their main source of information, which critics say makes a blanket cutoff a democratic-participation problem as much as a safety one.