The European Union could announce a ban on social media for children in the coming weeks, Ursula von der Leyen has said. The Telegraph has the story.
France is set to be the first EU country to follow Australia, which has a minimum age of 16, in outlawing the technology for children in September. It plans to stop children under 15 using the services.
Brussels could now propose legislation for an EU-wide ban sooner than that, after a panel of experts finishes deliberating online child safety, von der Leyen said.
“I believe we must consider a social media delay,” the European Commission President said at a conference in Copenhagen.
“Depending on the results, we could come up with a legal proposal this summer,” she said on Tuesday.
She praised Australia for its ban and added: “We are witnessing the lightning speed at which technology is advancing – and how it penetrates every corner of childhood and adolescence.
“Childhood and early adolescence are formative years, and I believe we should give our children more time to become resilient in this vulnerable phase.”
An EU-wide ban would risk angering Donald Trump, who already views EU regulation of US tech giants as disproportionate, protectionist and an attack on free speech.
The President has threatened to hit the EU with tariffs while Washington is lobbying Brussels and London to water down its tech regulation.
Spain, Germany, Ireland, Denmark and Greece are considering their own versions of a ban pioneered by Australia last December.
Worth reading in full.
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Many who support the social media ban for children also think that children have the maturity to change gender without parental involvement.
What is far scarier is that the EU is testing its own social media to be called W Social which will require ID and facial recognition. That would mean less fake accounts than on X but given how people in the UK can be gaoled for their X posts and hounded out of their jobs, it is unwise to post many things under your own name. W Social will be a Far Left lovefest just as bluesky is because they will censor anything they do not like, just as Twitter did prior to Musk buying it.
Remember kids – only schools are allowed to radicalise you!
Who would have thought encouraging an online world for sales and customer service in order to cut the number of workers would lead to people everywhere having to use a mobile phone in order to be part of the online world and now they find they can no longer control what people wish to see on their phone.
Just like the move to replace fossil fuels with windmills and not liking the results.
The kids are much more IT savvy than the adults. I’ve posts from kids in Australia bosting how they’ve got around the ban
“Banning” social media for children is not really possible – a fact which the EU knows perfectly well. Therefore, this fictional ban is not about children’s safety. So, what is it really about? The government surveillance of adults, perhaps?
Of course, creeping censorship of thought and deed in all possible ways.
That means Uniparty will do the same thing.
So up to 16 you can’t view any social media whatsoever then ALAKAZAM! suddenly you can vote in your national elections. I see.
What von der Leyen meant to say is that authority approved experts and news sources must be granted exclusive influence over the developing minds of children for a least the first 15 years. And this, she plans to accomplish by banning everyone from whatever said experts declare “social media” unless he can provided an approved proof of age.
Are they aware of VPNs? A lot of kids certainly are!
I’ve designed and implemented one from scratch and spent some years working on an IPsec/ IKEv1 based VPN product/ server for mobile clients. Which means that I very likely knew more about VPNs than you do now or ever will by a time when you were still entirely unaware of their existence.
An HTTP proxy would do for this, BTW. Or any other arrangement which can hide an IP address in the EU member country behind another from another area. This doesn’t strictly need a VPN.
I have a question.
Where is rhe boundary between the EU’s authority and the authority of the member states?
It seems to me as if there are no limits to what the EU can decide on behalf of member nations, at least in matters of regulation.
The US has a fairly clear constitution which distinguishes federal and states’ rights, which are of course contested all the time, but a least there is an attempt to draw a line.
The impression I get is that there seems to be no limit to the regulations the EU can impose on member states.
In any case the techno-socialist west will not give up until they have imposed Internet ID on everyone.
The EU cannot decide anything on behalf of anyone. The commission can create proposals for new EU legislation/ regulations. These become actual EU legislation/ regulations if both the EU parliament and the council of responsible ministers which contains one member of the goverments of all EU member states vote in favour of that. Depending on what’s being decided, the council can either decide by majority vote or consensual, that is, all members must agree,
Hungary gets fined for their recalcitrance on immigrants, presume that was majority rather than unanimous. Ultimately that’s the leverage – we fine you and if you don’t pay the fines we’ll kick you out and no more subsidies for you, tariffs etc…
Whether they will impose this or not, we shall see. Gut feel is they won’t, but many will go along. Some people here seem to think this is a good idea, if I remember correctly.
That was a decision that involved spending money.
I’m not sure new regulations need unanimous decision. If they did, they wouldn’t have so many. I genuinely don’t know where the line is, but it really does seem as if the commission can pretty much create any new regulations and get them rubber stamped by the parliament.
As I already wrote: Some do and some don’t. Current example would be the money supposed to be used to support Ukraine. Orban blocked this because an unanimous decision was required for that.
Since it’s improbable that you don’t know that, you’re very likely knowingly making untrue statements about the EU decorated with the usual weasel-wording. As you’re (probably) not Donald Trump and preaching to a choir of US ignoramuses supposed to vote for you, I’m seriously wondering what that’s supposed to accomplish.
Why are all the outspoken EU opponents so keen on bashing an badly made EU effigy of their own design instead of criticizing the real thing? One could almost believe that they’re doing this because they desparately need the EU as bogeyman for their own schemes and because of this, they don’t evet want it to change.
Hungary didn’t get fined. It just didn’t get all of the (mostly German) money the EU would have paid to it if it had chosen to implement these EU policies. The shows nicely that the EU has absolutely no way to force the government of a EU member state to do or refrain from doing anything.
It’s leverage of a sort though yes it’s probably not a “fine” as people would commonly understand that word. Ultimately they could chuck someone out though that is very unlikely.
The English saying about this is “The EU threw its toys out of the pram.” Orban himself remained unimpressed. This may have contributed to him losing an election but rampant nepotism in Hungary (or accusations of that) probably played a bigger role.
It’s where the EU says it is.
The EU has competencies (a misnomer if ever there was), where they have the power to regulate (not that they are competent at doing so).
There are degrees of “competence” which determine how member states are expected to respond to regulation.
I’m not up to date on where something like internet use or digital law might sit within EU regulation and requirements on member states.
I do certainly feel that whatever the EU commission decide, our lapdog government will follow suit and probably gold plate.
I do get that social media can be damaging for certain individuals, and that children should be protected from the worst of it, but it should be parents who set the limits and guidelines, not a Nanny state, who could assist parents if requested – if they were trustworthy, which our recent crop of sh1te are not!
As the quoted text correctly stated: Von der Leyen has plans to create a legal proposal. This doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll ever be implemented because that’s not her decision to make.