Europe Moves to Tighten Rules for Children, Social Media and AI Chatbots
The European Commission has proposed the EU KIDS Act, which would establish EU-wide age rules and stronger safety requirements for social media, online games and AI chatbots used by children. The proposal would restrict account creation by age, require parental supervision for younger teenagers, limit addictive design features and strengthen privacy-conscious age verification.
Large platforms and AI providers could face stricter safety testing, monitoring and significant fines for serious violations. Industry groups have warned that age verification could create privacy and cybersecurity risks. The proposal is not yet law and must be negotiated by EU member states and the European Parliament.
Europe is proposing a new set of rules that could significantly change how children and teenagers interact with social media, online games and AI chatbots.
The European Commission adopted the proposed EU KIDS Act on September 17, 2026, with the goal of creating common protections for children across the European Union. The proposal would introduce EU-wide age rules and require digital services used by young people to adopt stronger safety-by-design measures.
Under the proposal, children under 13 would not be allowed to create social media accounts. Teenagers aged 13 and 14 could use supervised accounts controlled by parents or guardians, while young people aged 15 and above could create their own accounts.
The proposal goes beyond social media.
AI chatbots and AI companions would also face new requirements when accessible to minors. The Commission says these systems should not use designs that could encourage emotional dependency, should undergo safety testing before launch and should be monitored for potential harm after deployment.
The proposed rules would also target features designed to encourage excessive use. These include infinite scrolling, certain notifications, reward mechanisms and other forms of addictive design. Recommendation systems for minors would have to put greater emphasis on safety and quality rather than simply maximizing engagement.
Age verification would become another major part of the system. Platforms would be required to establish users’ ages through secure methods, while the EU says the process should protect privacy rather than simply shifting the responsibility to children or parents.
The proposal also puts more responsibility on technology companies themselves.
For very large online platforms, the Commission says providers would have to demonstrate that their services meet the new safety requirements before they can be made available to children under the proposed framework. Fines could reach 6% of a provider’s worldwide annual turnover for serious non-compliance.
For AI companies, the proposal could represent another step toward treating conversational AI as a service requiring specific protections for younger users rather than simply as another general-purpose software tool.
The European Commission argues that children should still be able to benefit from digital technology, but that platforms should be designed around their safety from the beginning. The proposal therefore combines age restrictions with changes to how digital products themselves operate.
The technology industry has raised concerns about privacy and the practical consequences of widespread age verification. Reuters reported that industry representatives warned that collecting more information about children’s ages could itself create privacy and cybersecurity risks.
The EU KIDS Act is not yet final law. It will need to go through negotiations with EU member states and the European Parliament before it can take effect.
If adopted, however, the proposal could become an important test of how governments regulate a digital world where social platforms, games and AI assistants increasingly overlap.
The central question is no longer only how much time young people spend online. It is also how the technologies themselves are designed—and how much responsibility their creators should have for making those systems safer for younger users.
