ieExplains: What is the EU's Kids Act and how will it protect children?
Efforts to convince the social networking giants like Meta and TikTok to make their products safe for children have to date proved largely fruitless.
Whether seen as a scourge or a source of entertainment, social media is here to stay.
While adult opinions of the online space may wax and wane, for many years the effect that endless mindless scrolling through, often downright offensive, content has on minds that are too young to process it has been a bone of serious contention for parents globally.
Mainstream political movement regarding how best to regulate the issue has been painfully slow, though Europe and its nations have generally been more proactive on the matter than their American counterparts.
The problem is that efforts to convince the social networking giants like Meta and TikTok to make their products safe for children have to date proved largely fruitless.
Times may be changing however. This week saw probably the most important political intervention to date into the debate of minors and social media made by the President of the European Commission Ursula Von Der Leyen.
In her annual state of the union address on Wednesday, the president announced the pending introduction of the EU's Kids Act, a legislative proposal which, if approved by EU governments, is set to upend the system and make it a great deal harder for young people to access social media generally.
She cited growing evidence that children aged under 17 simply do not feel safe, have trouble sleeping, and are subject to incessant cyberbullying online.
But what does the new legislation do and can it work?
Keeping Internet Digital Spaces Accountable and Trustworthy. A similarly titled act introduced in the US House of Representatives last March stood for Kids Internet and Digital Safety, though no such meaning appears to apply to the EU's legislation.
Basically it will operate from the standpoint of making it far harder for social media companies to access young children, rather than the other way round. It will see access to those sites subject to tiers of difficulty, stretching from an outright ban on access for under-threes, to the right of access for those between three and 13 depending upon parental approval and controls underpinned by aggressive age-verification.
Between 13 and 15 children can set up accounts but only subject to strict regulations. From 15 onwards a young person can set up their own account.
The thinking appears to be that if making the platforms themselves totally safe is impractical, then ensuring that they simply cannot be accessed by younger minds is the most sensible approach going forward.
Some people were certainly, but much of the discourse on such a proposed ban in recent times has tended to lean towards a more nuanced approach, noting that an outright ban would likely punish children more than the social media companies themselves. The Kids Act would appear to be an attempt to recognise and allow for that nuance, or as the EU describes it, it represents "a staircase that follows how children grow up".
For children under three no access to any social networking site is permitted. For children aged over three but under 13 a blanket ban would also be in effect, albeit with limited access possible to certain child-friendly sites via a parent or guardian's own account and subject to strict parental controls.
The child in such circumstances would have no account of their own, no access to personalised feeds or search functionality, and would have to abide by strict time limits of up to an hour.
Once a child turns 13 a parent can set up a limited account on a site for them, again subject to time limits and parental controls including approved contact lists.
Yes. The platforms in question will be expected to analyse their own user listings within six months of the Act becoming law and delete any accounts where either the user is under 15 or is unable to prove that they are not.
That trawl will not affect adults or other accounts for which the platform can tell with a high degree of certainty that the user is of an appropriate age, by date of account creation for example. Age is to be verified via "certified solutions" such as a free EU age verification app, meaning the platforms will not know who the users being checked are.
Yes. The legislation will apply to social networking sites, video-sharing hosts, and AI chatbots, and will seek to clip the wings of the companies' notorious algorithms.
In practice, that means: no use of templates designed to induce addictive behaviour and the aforementioned hours of mindless scrolling; no contact from strangers; accounts set to safe settings by default; and protections against 'spending traps'. If the providers are proven to not be compliant they face fines of up to 6% of their multi-billion euro worldwide turnover.
The EU says there are two sides to the policy — ensuring that children gain access to the online world gradually as they grow up on one hand, and forcing the tech giants to make their products safe for young people on the other.
AI companions and chatbots are covered, and will be prohibited from using "designs that simulate human relationships in ways likely to create emotional dependency" and from being pushed on children, while all systems must be tested for risks to children before launch, and monitored for harm thereafter.
The draft Act has gone before the European Parliament and Council ahead of the legislative process which would see it ratified and adopted by member states or otherwise.
The commission has called for the law to be "adopted quickly". How long that will take is anyone's guess, but given there is an urgency to the debate, you can probably expect movement within the next 12 months.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
