The European Union has released new guidelines for the digital protection of minors, which will fall under the Digital Services Act (DSA). This will create a new age-verification app to help check minors against access to harmful content and cyberbullying.
This new prototype app will be developed in collaboration with member states and will start as a pilot project in Denmark, Greece, Spain, France and Italy. The app will help check the age of users in a robust, non-intrusive way. At the moment, the Commission has not released more specific details on how the app will work, with various solutions rumoured, from the usage of so-called “zero knowledge proof” technology to encrypted solutions that should ensure age verification without users releasing ID information. The pilot countries are expected to start using the app in 2026.
“Without proper age verification, we fail to protect children online. The guidelines launched today combined with the age verification app are both very important milestones,” said Caroline Stage Olsen, Minister for Digital Affairs of Denmark, commenting on the proposal. The Danish minister went even further, saying that she and the government “will immediately explore the national scope for setting a minimum age for access to social media. We must do everything we can to protect minors online.”
In addition, the new guidelines for digital protection will focus on addressing other potential threats to minors. The new guidelines will strongly suggest that tech companies, in particular social media, diminish exposure to addictive practices. Companies should offer features to disabling more aggressive and stimulation apps.
Finally, in terms of security, the Commission suggested that minors be empowered with stronger tools to block and mute users to avoid cyberbullying and recommends that platforms make profiles of minors private and visible only to their friends’ lists, so that both cyberbullies and strangers cannot easily contact them. An additional safety measure will be to prohibit downloading and taking screenshots of content from minors.
Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice President for Tech, said that “the guidelines on the protection of minors for online platforms, combined with the new age verification blueprint, are a huge step forward in this regard. Platforms have no excuse to be continuing practices that put children at risk.”
