The EU Wants to Ban Social Media for Everyone Under 13, Cap 13- and 14-Year-Olds at One Supervised Hour a Day, and Make Platforms Prove They're Safe or Pay Up to 6% of Global Revenue. The Kids Act Would Also Cover Video Games and AI Companions.

The European Union is moving to bar children under 13 from social media across all 27 member states and to impose hard limits on how older teenagers use it, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced in her annual State of the European Union address in Strasbourg on Wednesday. "No social media under the age of 13. No personal account under the age of 15," she told the European Parliament. The Commission followed through Thursday with the text of a proposed Kids Act that would also reach video games and AI companion chatbots.

The plan is tiered by age. Children under 13 would be shut out entirely. Thirteen- and 14-year-olds could hold "mini accounts" chaperoned by a parent or guardian, with stripped-down features and use capped at one hour a day. From 15, teenagers could open accounts of their own, but platforms would have to offer them a "safe design," with no addictive features such as infinite scrolling, no option to livestream, recommendation algorithms deemed safe for minors, and easy-to-use parental controls. Companies such as Meta and Google would have to verify a user's age when an account is opened, through an EU-wide age-verification app or national equivalents built to confirm only that someone is above a threshold, without collecting identity documents or biometric data. Firms that fail to comply would face fines of up to 6% of total annual global turnover, and the Commission would have a 90-day window to investigate suspected violations, with a 30-day review period for platforms with more than 45 million active users.

The legal heart of the proposal is a reversal of who has to prove what. "Our Kids Act is reversing the burden of proof — it is for platforms to show they are safe by design," von der Leyen said. "I am aware that many perceive the power of Big Tech as overwhelming and impossible to roll back. I disagree. Europe has the power to act. It is us who decide the rules, not Big Tech." She listed what Europe should refuse to accept: "We do not have to accept addictive features. We do not have to accept children being drawn into ever more extreme content. We do not have to accept that girls have their photos used for AI-generated sexualized images."

Most major platforms already say they bar users under 13, but regulators across Europe have accused them of failing to keep children off. The Commission's move follows a global wave of restrictions. Australia became the first country to ban social media for under-16s in December 2025, and the U.K., China and India have moved on their own rules. Inside the bloc, France's lawmakers voted in July to ban social media for under-15s, only to see the country's Constitutional Court strike the law down; Spain, Denmark and Sweden are pursuing age limits of their own. Lauro Fava, a partner at the law firm Pinsent Masons, said the Kids Act would be "a new EU behemoth" on the scale of the Digital Services Act and the AI Act, but argued companies would ultimately prefer "a single, coherent, and potentially more balanced rulebook" to a patchwork of national laws.

The proposal now has to survive the EU's legislative machinery, where the 27 member governments and the Parliament must debate and vote on it, a process that could take years. It also risks a fresh confrontation with President Donald Trump, who has long attacked Europe's tech regulations. Brando Benifei, an Italian member of the European Parliament who backs the plan, said Brussels should not shy away from that fight: "To apply this, you need to confront in a very frontal way the interests of platforms and Big Tech who are not happy with this." Not every expert is convinced the approach will work. David Inserra, a fellow for free expression and technology at the Cato Institute, warned that age restrictions "are not likely to be successful" because tech-savvy teenagers will find ways around them, while other critics say the plan merely delays young people's exposure without touching the industry's core business of keeping users scrolling to sell ads. Megan Jenkins of Assembly Research said the legislation nonetheless "goes further than other legislation proposed so far."

Von der Leyen used the same speech to say she would invite the leading AI labs to talks on how the EU can support efforts to slow the technology's development, something the heads of Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI have all called for in recent days, warning of "massive risks" including "hacking on a level we never thought possible."