European Union regulators are developing rules to limit social media companies' business models in order to protect children and adolescents, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a speech delivered in Copenhagen on Tuesday.
Von der Leyen said that the harms children face from social media are not accidental but stem from business models that treat young users' attention as a tradable commodity. She named specific platforms as targets for the Commission's actions, citing TikTok and the services of Meta Platforms - Instagram and Facebook - as areas of concern.
On TikTok, the Commission intends to take measures aimed at features the regulator describes as intentionally addictive. Von der Leyen identified endless scrolling, autoplay and push notifications as specific design elements subject to scrutiny. She said that similar scrutiny applies to Meta's Instagram and Facebook because the Commission believes those platforms are failing to enforce their own minimum age requirement of 13.
"We are taking action against TikTok and its addictive design, endless scrolling, autoplay and push notifications. The same applies to Meta, because we believe Instagram and Facebook are failing to enforce their own minimum age of 13," von der Leyen said.
The Commission has also initiated proceedings against X in connection with the platform's Grok artificial intelligence tool, following concerns about the creation of sexual images involving women and children.
Von der Leyen indicated that further action is scheduled for later this year, when the Commission will target a wider set of practices it deems addictive or harmful. She listed examples of the practices under consideration - "attention capture, complex contracts, subscription traps" - as part of forthcoming regulatory measures.
On the broader question of teenagers' interaction with social media, von der Leyen advocated for stringent restrictions. She framed the debate not as whether young people should have access to social platforms but whether the platforms themselves should be allowed to access young people. She called for strict rules that would prohibit access for teenagers younger than a specified age, without specifying that age in her remarks.
These statements lay out the Commission's planned regulatory direction: a combination of targeted actions against named platforms and a broader agenda tackling design features and commercial practices the EU views as posing risks to minors.