Europe supports social media age limits: "the aim is to close gaps in existing laws"
Members of the European Parliament support implementing online age verification checks across the European Union.
In November 2025, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling on the European Commission to consider a minimum age that would be appropriate to access social media for teenagers.
The European Parliament’s Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) and the Committee on Culture and Education (CULT) prepared a document titled the Opinion, which included proposals for a common European age limit for social media.
The Opinion calls for a ban on social media for children under the age of 13. The use of social media should only be allowed from the age of 16, unless parents consent to this when their kids are 13, 14, or 15 years old.
The Opinion proposes that a ban could be included in a future law known as the Digital Fairness Act. In addition, it suggests that practices like targeted advertising, influencer promotions, addictive design features, loot boxes, and in-game currencies could be covered in the new legislation as well.
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“The aim is to close gaps in existing laws, while avoiding unnecessary regulatory complexity for businesses,” the European Parliament states.
In addition, artificial intelligence (AI) tools have also been addressed in the Opinion by highlighting risks such as misinformation, manipulation, and emotional dependency. These risks call for strict safeguards.
According to the results of the roll-call votes, a majority of the political factions in the European Parliament were in favor of the Opinion (33 votes). A total of 4 votes were cast against the proposals, and 6 votes were abstained from voting.
“The opinion promotes effective and privacy-friendly age verification across the European Union and calls for stronger and more consistent enforcement of existing laws protecting children online,” the European Parliament said in a press release that was recently published.
As of writing, there’s a fragmented approach to age verification, which can lead to unequal protection across the EU, as is perfectly demonstrated in Cybernews’s in-depth article on Europe’s social media ban wave.
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