The European Commission’s proposed Kids Act aims to enhance online safety for children but faces criticism over privacy risks and potential for increased digital control, raising questions about the balance between protection and freedom.
The European Commission’s new Kids Act is being sold as a child-protection measure, but it is already provoking a sharper debate over what online safety should mean in practice. The proposal would bar children under 13 from social media, allow teenagers aged 13 to 15 only under parental supervision, and permit autonomous accounts from 15 onwards, while requiring platforms to prove that their services are age-appropriate and safe by design. Brussels says the aim is to reduce harm from social media, video games and AI systems, and to shift the burden of proof on to service providers rather than users.
That ambition comes with significant trade-offs. The proposal would push age assurance far deeper into everyday internet use, encouraging certified verification methods and, in practice, more frequent checks before users can access mainstream services. The Commission says the system should protect minors without retaining personal data, but critics argue that any large-scale age-gating framework can still normalise intrusive verification and create new privacy risks for everyone, not just children. The Act’s emphasis on parental responsibility also means families would be drawn more directly into account setup and verification processes.
The safety-by-design element is broader still. According to the Commission and the Act’s public explanation, covered services would need to make child-safe settings the default, limit features that encourage excessive use, and ensure minors’ profiles are private by default. The proposal also reaches AI companions and chatbots, which would have to be turned off by default for minors and designed so they do not foster emotional dependency. App stores would also be drawn into the system through age-rating and access controls, extending compliance duties well beyond social networks alone.
That breadth is exactly what worries privacy and digital-rights advocates. Writing for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, critics argue that the Kids Act risks building a broad infrastructure for control while paying too little attention to freedom of expression, access to information and the rights of young users themselves. They also say the proposal is so wide-ranging that it could entrench the largest companies, which are better placed to absorb compliance costs and deploy privacy-intrusive verification systems across their products. In that view, a measure intended to protect children could end up hardening the online environment into one where access is filtered, monitored and standardised by default.
The Commission’s case is that the Act creates a more coherent framework for protecting minors online and gives regulators a firmer basis for enforcement. But the criticism from civil-liberties groups is that the draft blurs a line between child protection and a much wider model of digital control. The outcome may depend on whether lawmakers narrow the proposal so that it targets the most harmful practices without turning age verification, parental oversight and design regulation into a general condition of internet access.
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