The European Commission has proposed a ban on social media access for under 13s, with additional restrictions and protections for those under 18.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that under the proposed legislation, “mini accounts” with limited features and time restrictions could be set up and supervised by parents of children between 13 and 15 years old. From 15 to 18, young people would be able to have their own accounts, but platforms would be required to provide a “safe by design” online environment.

The proposal for the EU Kid’s Act was published yesterday. 

The All Ireland Science Media Centre asked local experts to comment.

Dr Lorna Staines, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Maynooth University, comments:

“The EU KIDS Act shows a great step forward in child safety online. First and foremost, it places the burden on social media platforms to provide adequate support, rather than primarily placing the onus on parents.

“The EU KIDS Act Under 13-year-olds will be banned from any social media, and 13-15 year old will be significantly restricted (guardian’s setting up mini accounts linked to their account, additional safeguards, and max 1 hour usage). This is a promising step, as evidence from Ireland using the “Growing up in Ireland” study found that, for children born 2008, 28% spent 1+ hour online at age 9. This rose to 91.4% by the time the young people were 13, with an alarming 12.9% spending 4+ hours a day.

“There’s no proposed restriction on time usage for adolescents age 15-18, although evidence from Ireland suggests that time spent on social media is high in this age group; A recent study from Planet Youth show 28% report spending 4+ hours a day on social media, 38% of girls and 21% of boys. This has been linked to worse mental health and higher rates of self-harm behaviour, particularly among girls. Similarly, time spent on social media has been linked to worse sleep & school performance in teenagers,

“For adolescents age 15-18, the EU KIDS Act will increase online safety, by placing obligations on social media sites including limiting AI, stopping addictive features and profiling-based recommenders. This is a big step forward, as emerging research suggests that the targeted algorithms used by social media sites play a key role in why young people feel a “loss of control” in their social media usage (Winstone et al., 2026). Similarly, there has been a tragic rise in suicide attempts and deaths among young people who had spoken with AI chatbots (Chung, Bernier & Hudon, 2026).

“The EU KIDS Act shows promising nuance, rather than blanket bans for under 16s in places like Australia, it proposes a staggered approach and better safeguards. While there are harms to social media, evidence also suggests it’s a vital tool. My own ongoing research shows that 74% of Irish teenagers (age 15-17) reported using social media as a source of mental health information. Similarly, LGBT+ youth and other young people who may be isolated in their own local area, can find a sense of community and support online (Berger et al., 2022).

“While the KIDS Act is a promising steps forward, it is very likely technology companies will push back against such changes. Additionally, from a logistics standpoint, the age verification system proposed in order to implement the KIDS Act has yet to be completed. This may well prove difficult in Ireland where there has been significant resistance to national identity cards. For parents now, ways to protect your child include limiting screen time, and not allowing phones in the bedroom at night. This has been linked to better sleep and school performance (Nagata et al., 2025), as well as a layer of protection against online harassment and grooming.

“This is a difficult up-hill battle for parents, youth, and governments, but the EU shows a promising, and nuanced approach to social media and protecting young people online.”

Declaration of interest: “I have no conflicts of interest with what I’ve reported”

Dr Dean McDonnell, Lecturer of Psychology, South East Technological University, comments: 

“Discussions surrounding the EU KIDS Act raise important questions about how digital environments are designed for children. To be clear, there are good reasons to scrutinise attention-grabbing features such as infinite scrolling, persuasive notifications and recommendation systems. We should be cautious, however, about moving from evidence of specific risks to the broader claim that social media is responsible for significant changes in young people’s mental health.

“The wider evidence cautions against causal claims. Mission Australia’s 2025 Youth Survey reported that 19% of young people were experiencing high psychological distress, down from 25% in 2023, despite social media remaining embedded in everyday life. This does not show that social media is harmless; it shows why population time trends alone cannot establish causation. Similarly, Chen and colleagues (2026) objectively tracked phone use in 40 adolescents over 90 days. Greater phone use did not predict poorer mood the following morning. Instead, adolescents engaged in more passive phone use on days when they had already reported greater negative affect. The sample was small, but it illustrates why directionality matters.

“Video games are also particularly interesting here, as age restrictions primarily target social-networking and video-sharing accounts, while online games fall within the wider safety-by-design framework. App stores would also have to age-rate video games and prevent children from accessing or purchasing age-inappropriate apps. The boundary between social media and gaming is increasingly blurred, with many online games also acting as social environments where young people talk, cooperate, challenge each other, and maintain friendships. The key question is not how long a child spends looking at a screen, but what they do through it and how that environment is designed.

“There is also an implementation question. WHO Europe reports substantial variation in child and youth mental-health provision across the wider European Region, with one in five countries lacking a dedicated policy, and one in four lacking community-based services (MHW, 2025). This does not show that the KIDS Act will cause harm, but it raises the possibility that a universal restriction could have unintended consequences depending on the supports available to a child or family.

“Lived experience is valuable, but anecdotal is best understood as hypothesis-generating rather than hypothesis-testing. Individual experiences can show researchers where to look, not establish causality or demonstrate how a restriction will improve mental health. For some young people, online communities may provide connection and routes to support. Protecting children online matters, but so does ensuring that when something is restricted, young people have meaningful relationships, services, spaces and opportunities available offline.”

Declaration of interest: “I have no financial or commercial conflicts of interest relevant to this report. I am a developmental psychologist, member of the Psychological Society of Ireland and lecturer at South East Technological University. The views expressed are my own.”

Dr Harshvardhan Pandit, Research Fellow, AI Accountability Lab, Trinity College Dublin, comments: 

“The biggest worry is how the requirements being based on specific age brackets will create a new surveillance infrastructure under the guise
of ‘age verification’.  The Act does not contain any sufficient provisions for how the age-verification information will not be misused, especially for
surveillance based profiling and advertising on the internet. 

“Addictive design and other similar issues were already the subject of Meta’s recent settlement of $17B with 47 U.S. States regarding child-safety platforms. Instead of developing a new law, the EU could have used the existing Digital Services Act (DSA) that also addresses design and ‘systemic risk’ for minors.

“The KIDS Act will take at least two years to be negotiated with the Parliament and the Council, and will be subject to intense lobbying from
the industry, resulting in dilution and amendments. Enforcement will then start a further year later. Meanwhile, we have very low enforcement of
existing regulations like the GDPR, AI Act, and DSA, which heavily overlap with the requirements of the KIDS Act.

“It’s worrying that the EU is proposing this substantial new piece of legislation while it’s in the middle of a deregulatory push under its ongoing ‘simplicfication agenda’. The Commission has yet again failed to publish its impact assessment on what options were identified or considered before settling on this as the best solution.

“The KIDS Act further increases the confusion of which authority regulates what, with the unfortunate result of existing authorities not flexing their GDPR or AI Act powers. While the Commission has given itself powers to regulate under the DSA, it is itself also slow — its own inquiries into Instagram were opened in 2024 and preliminary findings published only in July 2026.

“A simpler solution could have been to further extend the DSA’s notion of ‘systemic risk’ to include addictive design (for minors) [4] and speed up the existing investigation.”

Declaration of interest: None to declare. I’m an employee of Trinity. I have no commercial relationships with any of the companies being discussed in the context of this article. 

The comment below was first distributed on 16.09.2026, after President von der Leyen’s State of the European Union address, but prior to the Kid’s Act being published in full. 

Dr Eoin Whelan, Professor in Business Analytics & Society, University of Galway, comments: 

“Overall, I believe the restrictions proposed by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen are proportionate and sensible.  While public debate often assumes that social media is causing widespread harm to young people, the scientific evidence is far from clear-cut. Researchers disagree about both the size and nature of social media’s effects on children and adolescents, with numerous studies suggesting these effects may be small or highly dependent on individual circumstances.

“An outright ban on under 16s, as was implemented in Australia, had been discussed. I am pleased to see this was not proposed in the EU for all under 16s.  The goal should be to protect young people within the online world, not to protect them from it.  As per the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, children have the right to association, access to information, freedom of expression, and participation – all of which would have been severely restricted if a full ban was implemented.  A complete ban for under 16s would also bring about unintended consequences, for example, further isolating children in vulnerable family, social, and economic situations who rely on social media to receive social support from peers.  

“While there is currently little scientific evidence that safe-by-design measures, such as restricting infinite scroll, autoplay features, or algorithmic personalisation, will positively impact young people, it makes sense to take a precautionary step and restrict these designs for under 18s. Restricting these features will result in some unintended consequences, but these are unlikely to harm young people in the long run.  Child safety should remain the priority. When better evidence emerges, policymakers should review these restrictions to ensure they are still fit for purpose.”

Declaration of interest: I declare that I have no personal, professional, financial, or academic conflicts of interest in relation to this topic.