European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has proposed banning social media for children under 13 across the 27-nation bloc, with no personal accounts for anyone under 15. She announced it in her State of the European Union address in Strasbourg on Wednesday, alongside a new Kids Act the Commission will table on Thursday.
The Act would reverse the burden of proof, requiring platforms to demonstrate they are safe for minors rather than regulators proving harm.
Interesting insights on the EU social media ban
The burden-of-proof reversal is the mechanism that matters. Facebook, Instagram and TikTok already bar under-13s from opening accounts, and authorities have accused them of failing to enforce it. Shifting the obligation onto platforms to prove safety changes who carries the cost of age assurance and who is liable when it fails.
Von der Leyen was direct about the politics, saying Europe decides the rules rather than big tech, and Italian MEP Brando Benifei acknowledged the plan requires confronting platform interests head-on.
The timeline is the catch. The Kids Act needs approval from individual member states and could take years, and several countries have already moved on their own. France passed a blanket under-15 ban in July that was struck down before taking effect, and Macron filed a revised proposal on 14 September targeting addictive features instead.
Manfred Weber, who leads the largest group in the European Parliament, used the same session to propose the EU follow Australia in letting users switch off recommendation algorithms. Von der Leyen also said the Commission will meet leading AI labs to discuss slowing advanced development, working with Canada and Britain on model evaluation and early warning.
What others are saying about the EU social media ban
CNN reported the announcement and noted the Kids Act could take years to clear member states. The Associated Press carried Weber's call for algorithm opt-outs and von der Leyen's comments on AI cooperation. TechTimes documented France retreating from a blanket ban to feature-level curbs after its law was struck down, which is the clearest signal of how hard these rules are to actually implement.
Age assurance is becoming the price of entry
Follow what these proposals have in common rather than the headline ages. Australia banned under-16s, then moved to force algorithm opt-outs. France tried a ban, lost it in court, and pivoted to addictive features. Now the EU proposes an age floor plus a reversed burden of proof. Every route ends in the same requirement: platforms must verify how old their users are, which means verifying everyone, including adults.
That is the part that reaches South Africa. Our own age verification rules are still in draft and target video platforms, so we are not setting any of this. But a platform building age assurance for 450 million Europeans does not build a separate unverified version for us, and the compliance cost lands in the product everyone uses.
If you run a consumer product with any teenage users, the direction is clear enough to design for now.
You might also like our piece on Australia's algorithm opt-out laws, the Meta child safety settlement and its R270bn price, and ChatGPT for Teens arriving after the lawsuits.
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