EU Commission Proposes Sweeping Under-13 Social Media Ban Amid Child Safety Push

In an era when childhood increasingly unfolds across digital landscapes, the European Commission has proposed one of the most sweeping regulatory interventions yet attempted: a hard ban on social media access for children under thirteen, enforced not by parental discretion but by mandatory age verification built into the architecture of platforms themselves. The proposal extends to online gaming and AI chatbots, signaling a broader ambition to draw a structural boundary around the youngest internet users rather than leaving protection to industry goodwill or family oversight. Whether this repr