The EU Commission is looking to create a safer online environment for children with the launch of a public consultation on draft guidelines for the protection of minors online under the Digital Services Act.
With this move the EU aims to support online platforms accessible to minors to ensure a high level of privacy, safety, and security for children.
“The draft guidelines we are publishing today under the Digital Services Act will help shape a better and safer online environment for younger users,” said EC vice-president Henna Virkkunen: “The wide range of measures will aid the different online platforms in protecting minors’ safety, security, privacy and well-being.”
The draft guidelines cover a wide range of measures such as verifying user’s age, improving how content is recommended to users to reduce the risk of children being exposed to harmful content, setting children’s accounts to private by default, best practices for child-safe content moderation, child-friendly reporting channels and user support, as well as guidance on platforms’ internal governance.
Stakeholders, including Better Internet for Kids (BIK+) Youth ambassadors, have been extensively consulted and contributed to the development of the draft guidelines. The measures outlined in the guidelines will apply to online platforms of all sizes, except micro and small enterprises, that are accessible to minors, including very large online platforms with over 45 million monthly users in the EU.
The draft guidelines are open for final public feedback until 10 June 2025. The Commission is seeking contributions from all stakeholders, including children, parents and guardians, national authorities, online platform providers, and experts.
The EU executive is looking to adopt the guidelines before summer 2025, marking a significant milestone in the EU’s efforts to create a safer digital environment for children.
In parallel, the Commission is working on an age-verification app, intended to provide an interim solution until the EU Digital Identity Wallet becomes available by the end of 2026. This app, based on the same technology as the EU Wallet, will enable online service providers to verify if users are 18 years or older without compromising their privacy, further enhancing the protection of minors online. The aim of the project is to develop an EU harmonised privacy-preserving age verification solution, including a white-label open-source app by summer 2025. The first version of the technical specifications and the beta version are already available on GitHub.
