EU plans crackdown on addictive social media design targeting children

The European Union is preparing new rules to protect children from the addictive design of social media platforms such as TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and X, Ursula von der Leyen announced.

“Lack of sleep, depression, anxiety, self-harm, addictive behavior, cyberbullying, grooming, exploitation, suicides. The risks are multiplying rapidly,” von der Leyen said during a speech in Copenhagen.

“These risks are the reality of the digital world. They are not accidental. They are the result of business models that treat our children’s attention as a commodity,” she added, CE Report quotes HINA.

Von der Leyen said the European Commission will focus in its upcoming Digital Fairness Act (DFA), expected by the end of the year, on “addictive and harmful design practices.”

The DFA would also introduce stricter limits on the use of artificial intelligence on social media platforms, she said, while supporting the introduction of a minimum age requirement for access to such platforms.

“The question is not whether young people should have access to social media, but whether social media should have access to young people,” von der Leyen stressed.

The new regulation will strengthen and expand the Digital Services Act, which already requires major platforms to take stronger action against illegal and harmful content, she added.

Under the Act, the Commission is already conducting investigations into TikTok, X, and Meta Platforms’ Instagram and Facebook platforms.

“We are taking action against TikTok and its addictive design, endless scrolling, autoplay, and push notifications. The same applies to Meta, because we believe Instagram and Facebook are failing to enforce their own minimum age rule of 13 years,” von der Leyen said.

The Commission has also launched proceedings against X over the use of its artificial intelligence tool Grok to generate sexualized images of women and children, according to Reuters.

Photo: AI