"The question is not whether young people should have access to social media, the question is whether social media should have access to young people," Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU's executive Commission, said in Copenhagen.

EU takes aim at TikTok, Meta's 'addictive designs' for teens

· BreakingNews

The head of the European Commission called on Tuesday for more protections for children against the "addictive designs" of social media platforms like TikTok, Meta META and X, raising the possibility of an age limit on teens accessing them.

Europe is hardening its stance against social media, with nations from Norway and France to Turkey and Britain debating or rolling out legislation to ban or limit teenage social media use, looking to Australia's early move for inspiration.

"The question is not whether young people should have access to social media, the question is whether social media should have access to young people," Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU's executive Commission, said in Copenhagen.

"Sleep deprivation, depression, anxiety, self-harm, addictive behaviour, cyberbullying, grooming, exploitation, suicide. Risks are multiplying fast."

Von der Leyen said the Commission would target "addictive and harmful design practices" in its Digital Fairness Act (DFA), to be proposed towards the end of the year, while an expert panel was preparing advice on how to proceed.

"Without pre-empting the panel's findings, I believe we must consider a social media delay. Depending on the results, we could come with a legal proposal this summer," she said.

The DFA would ban manipulative practices, addictive features and misleading influencer marketing on digital platforms.

Digital world risks are "the result of business models that treat our children's attention as a commodity," von der Leyen said, calling for strict limits on AI use in social media.

"We are taking action against TikTok and its addictive design, endless scrolling, autoplay and push notifications," said von der Leyen, referring to ongoing cases.

"The same applies to Meta, because we believe Instagram and Facebook are failing to enforce their own minimum age of 13."

Spokespeople at TikTok, Meta and X did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The new regulation will strengthen and expand the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA), which requires large platforms to do more to tackle illegal and harmful content, von der Leyen said.

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Under the DSA rules, the Commission is already investigating TikTok, X and META, Instagram and Facebook.

It has been investigating X over possible risks from deploying Grok in the EU, including the spread of manipulated sexualised images.

On Tuesday, Europe's top court sided with Italy's telecoms watchdog against Meta, saying it should compensate publishers for using snippets of their articles.

TikTok, meanwhile, made a last-ditch attempt to scrap its designation as a "gatekeeper" under EU rules, which require it to meet tougher standards.