BRUSSELS: The European Union (EU) is considering potential fines of as much as 6% of a company’s annual sales for online services that fail to prevent children from accessing their platforms, as part of the bloc’s plans for a social media ban for kids under the age of 15.
The new rules will apply to social networks, video-sharing platforms, application stores, online games, artificial intelligence (AI) companions and conversational AI chatbots, according to draft legislation seen by Bloomberg.
The proposed law would set an EU-wide legal age limit on social media services for the first time.
The European Union has been under pressure from member states to introduce bloc-wide rules as the global movement to restrict children’s access to social media gains steam.
Individual EU member states have been planning their own limits in the wake of curbs introduced by Australia last year.
The bloc’s executive branch, the European Commission, is seeking new rules to force technology companies to age-gate their services to keep out the young users. Online encyclopaedias, educational platforms, public services’ apps, and software repositories are exempt.
The Kids Act’s enforcement framework is modelled after existing tech regulations in the bloc such as the AI Act and the Digital Services Act, the latter of which also carries maximum fines of 6% of a company’s annual global sales.
In practice, the European Union has never sought a fine that approached the maximum potential levy.
Platforms will have to pay a fee to fund the commission’s supervision, which can not exceed 0.03% of a company’s global annual sales, according to the draft.
Under the proposal, the European Union would establish a minimum age of 15 to open an “autonomous account”, which is an account without parental supervision.
Children between three and 13 years old will only be allowed access to services tailored for children and with full parental supervision.
Minors aged 13 and 14 will be allowed accounts on mainstream platforms with significant restrictions including daily time limits and parental controls.
Platforms will also need to adopt safety features to minimise abuse and addictive behaviours, which is a draft that might change before it’s published. — Bloomberg
