Next week, the EU is expecting to receive a report from a panel that was set up to examine how kids can be protected from potential harms on social media. The release of that report could result in the bloc enacting legislation that restricts minors from using social media.
At the moment, the EU says they will look into all options, such as requiring social media platforms to modify or remove some features or services, or even banning children below a certain age from accessing social media. The panel report slated for release next week could guide the regional bloc as to what measures need to be taken to protect children from the risks they face while online.
The report, due on July 13, is expected to offer suggestions on how kids can be protected not just while using social media but also while using the internet in general.
The EU is under pressure to act because many member states, such as Germany and France, have drafted their own legislation to restrict social media access for kids. Analysts suggest that the EU panel is unlikely to recommend a complete ban on social media access as was the case in Australia last year.
This is because the Australia example exposed the challenges that come with taking such a radical step, and the EU isn’t eager to walk that same path. Instead, the analysts say, the bloc is more likely to require social media firms to take steps intended to protect minors. Those steps include implementing age verification and disabling features that are seen as harmful, such as endless scrolling or the personalized feeds generated by algorithms.
Critics of banning social media say the EU already has a regulatory framework that it can use to enforce the needed protections for minors. Under that law, platforms are required to swiftly remove content that has been flagged as dangerous, for example. However, these critics add, the bloc has so far been timid in enforcing the existing legal framework designed to rein in the excesses of social media platforms.
The example for this is the way Chinese firm TikTok was ordered to change the “addictive design” of its platform while an American-based platform was simply told to implement age-verification for users.
As momentum builds around the world to restrict how children access or use social media and the internet in general, tech giants like Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ: META) could face operational challenges in different markets on a scale that they haven’t seen before.
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