Protection of minors - Office of Electronic Communications

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Protection of minors

The protection of minors is one of the pillars of the DSA, which imposes an obligation on digital platforms to prevent harmful content and features that could negatively affect younger users. The digital well-being of children and young people is treated as a particularly sensitive area requiring enhanced protection. The regulation sets a new level of safety standards for children in the online environment. The European Commission not only supervises compliance with the regulations, but also supports the development of technological protection solutions, regulatory measures, and cooperation between stakeholders to ensure a safe and friendly Internet for minors.

Graphics and text: Platforms' obligations regarding the protection of minors include identifying the user's age; blocking ads based on profiling; implementing additional privacy protection measures; providing clear information about the rules for protecting minors.

On July 14, the European Commission published guidelines on the protection of minors in the digital environment and presented a prototype age verification application developed in accordance with the requirements of the DSA. The adoption of the guidelines is an important step in the implementation of the EU strategy to increase the safety of children and young people on the Internet. The document contains an illustrative catalog of proportionate and adequate measures that digital platforms can use to mitigate risks associated with threats such as access to harmful content, addictive user engagement mechanisms, cyberbullying, and aggressive commercial practices.

The guidelines will apply to all online platforms accessible to minors, with the exception of micro and small enterprises.

Graphics and text: The key objectives of the guidelines are to reduce mechanisms that reinforce addiction to the use of services (the obligation to eliminate features that can lead to addiction to the use of services, such as notifications that create social pressure, endless scrolling, or reward systems for continuous activity, the aim is to ensure a safer and more sustainable digital environment); counteracting cyberbullying (the obligation to implement tools that allow users, especially minors, to block, mute, and control interactions with others); limiting exposure to harmful content (requirement to use effective content classification and filtering systems, as well as mechanisms for reporting and rapid intervention in the event of violations); limiting contact with strangers (obligation to provide mechanisms that limit the ability of strangers to contact minors; these mechanisms should protect the privacy of younger users by default, preventing, among other things, the sending of messages, invitations, or adding to groups without the minor's consent)

In its guidelines, the Commission also recommends the use of effective age verification methods, provided that they are accurate, reliable, robust, non-invasive, and non-discriminatory.

On July 14, 2025, the Commission presented the first version of the EU Age Verification Action Plan, which aims to establish a uniform, user-friendly, and privacy-friendly method of age verification in all Member States.

The plan provides for a mechanism enabling users to confirm that they are over 18 years of age when accessing adult content, such as pornographic material, without having to disclose personal data. The system is based on open source software and has been designed to be highly reliable, easy to use, privacy-friendly, and fully interoperable with future European digital identity wallets.

The Commission will use the guidelines to assess the compliance of online platforms with the DSA, in particular Article 28. 1.