New EU action plan against online violence coming

In the past year, 69 percent of children had at least one negative experience online, said Croatian MEP Sunčana Glavak, who has been appointed the rapporteur of the European People’s Party for a report on the impact of social media on young people, her office announced in a statement, CE Report quotes HINA.

“Millions of minors use digital platforms daily without proper protection from manipulation, abuse, and harmful content. Research has shown that every third internet user is a child, and that young people aged 13 to 17 spend an average of 8 hours and 39 minutes in front of a screen each day,” Glavak said.

She emphasized that she will advocate for the report to include a call for the full “criminalization of online abuse.”

The report by the Committee on Culture and Education will cover the impact of algorithm-generated content on the mental health of young people, the responsibility of platforms to remove harmful content, the application of safety-by-design principles, and the inclusion of media literacy and digital resilience skills in education, the statement highlights.

The document will serve as a political call to the European Commission for urgent action to protect children and young people in the digital space, it adds.

The MEP said that protecting children online must be a joint European priority and that the report will set clear expectations for the European Commission and serve as a turning point in the fight against online abuse and the “irresponsible behavior of social media platforms.”

“We must ensure the full implementation of existing legislative solutions that require greater accountability from social media platforms so that the responsibility for protecting children does not fall solely on parents, who are sometimes powerless in the face of technological development,” said Glavak.

According to the statement, many EU member states support the establishment of age limits for access to certain online content to ensure safer internet use.

Glavak also announced that the European Commission will, in the coming weeks, present the age-verification app Mini Wallet, “which should lay the foundation for protecting children from age-inappropriate content,” while an Action Plan against Online Violence will be introduced at the beginning of next year.