{"id":805,"date":"2025-11-27T15:02:53","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T07:02:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.midytech.com\/?p=805"},"modified":"2025-11-27T15:02:53","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T07:02:53","slug":"eu-moves-to-ban-social-media-for-under-16s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.midytech.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/27\/eu-moves-to-ban-social-media-for-under-16s\/","title":{"rendered":"EU Moves to Ban Social Media for Under-16s"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Strasbourg, France \u2013<\/strong>&nbsp;On November 26, the European Parliament, sitting in Strasbourg, passed a landmark resolution aiming to set the default minimum age for unsupervised use of social media platforms and AI-driven chatbots at 16. The resolution also proposes banning children under 13 from creating social media accounts, uploading videos, or interacting with &#8220;AI companion&#8221; applications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">EU lawmakers stated this measure is a direct response to a sharp increase in rates of anxiety, depression, body-image disorders, and self-harm among adolescents who spend more than three hours daily on algorithmically curated feeds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Although the resolution itself is non-binding, it instructs the European Commission to draft enforceable legislation within the next twelve months. Under the proposed rules, all platforms operating within the EU would be required to verify users&#8217; ages via &#8220;privacy-preserving, state-certified digital wallets.&#8221; Users identified as under 16 would be automatically switched to a &#8220;maximum-safety&#8221; mode, disabling features such as targeted advertising, infinite scroll, and push notifications by default.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">National data-protection authorities would be empowered to levy fines of up to 6% of a company&#8217;s global annual turnover for violations. Furthermore, EU member states would be required to fund digital-literacy courses for parents and teachers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Parliament rejected amendments from industry groups that sought to keep the minimum age threshold at 13, arguing that the adolescent brain remains highly vulnerable to dopamine-driven design tricks between the ages of 13 and 15. Civil society groups welcomed the move but cautioned that strict technological enforcement must be accompanied by enhanced mental-health support services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If formally enacted, these rules would establish the strictest child online safety standards in the democratic world and could potentially become a global benchmark, similar to the EU&#8217;s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Strasbourg, France \u2013&nbsp;On N&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":806,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4],"tags":[235,24,236],"class_list":["post-805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people","category-policy-impact","tag-16s","tag-ai","tag-european"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midytech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midytech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midytech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midytech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midytech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.midytech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":807,"href":"https:\/\/www.midytech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805\/revisions\/807"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midytech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midytech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midytech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midytech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}