Issue #12 - December 5, 2025

Australia bans social media for youth, exposing further EU's immobility on the issue

Almost 6 months after the start of the EU Presidency of Denmark and the promise to significantly progress on protecting youth online, the result so far sounds quite underwhelming, and significantly light when compared to Australia that will apply a full ban of social media platforms for youth in early December. First evidence: EU Member states are still pursuing their national agenda, which will never create effective legislation, since the EU has the responsibility to lead on this file. This effectively confirms Member states still don't believe the EU can succeed in the short term, but also exposes an embarrassing vacuum on an issue the EU has been engaged on for many years now.

Ironically, while Denmark has announced to use its rotating Presidency to lead the effort at EU level, it is at national level that it has made best progress. Its government has recently launched a legislative process to ban the use of social media below 15 years old. On the EU side, Denmark has obtained the signature by most of the member states of the Jutland declaration on youth protection online, a text empty of any concrete measures for the months to come. The text stresses the need for more reliable age verification tools and acknowledges the EU should explore whether measures are required to complement the DSA, thus indicating there is no clear legislative agenda considered at this stage that has gained consensus among member states.

Danish Presidency, the EP and the EC have recently floated the idea that the Digital Fairness Act (DFA), a file currently in consultation stage, could be envisaged to fill the gap left by the DSA. If Youth regulation is introduced in the DFA, that means the file will take a few more years to be enforced—an eternity given the stakes.

While the EU has been active, Australia on the other side of the spectrum has adopted the strictest ban that will start being in effect starting December 10, with no user under 16 able to open an account, leaving teenagers, for whom most of their life is spent online, having to find alternative, and certainly very creative ways to keep consuming content and communicating with their friends. Comparatively, Denmark's move seems to be endorsing the idea that a ban is a last resort solution. Their proposition involves giving some parents—after a specific assessment—the right to let their children access social media from age 13. The Jutland declaration makes no mention of a ban.

Given the political pressure, social media companies have reacted too. Meta has been calling for a few months for a regulation at EU level, considering the issue to be dealt with by governments, but has fallen short of saying how really it envisions this regulation to be done in practice and in which vehicle. On Instagram, parental controls have been made stricter, and PG-13 content ratings were introduced in October. But age verification measures remain largely ineffective on most platforms. While Meta, TikTok, and others have introduced parental controls and some age-checking features, these rely primarily on self-declaration and age assurance rather than age verification based on IDs or other existing solutions that can prove real age. Still, Australia's December 2025 enforcement has forced platforms to finally implement facial age estimation and ID verification at scale, demonstrating that such technical measures are feasible when platforms face serious regulatory consequences.

Early research has already shown the massive deceptive impact AI chatbots can have on some users who can develop behavioral issues. Given the ubiquity of such tools, and the willingness of platforms such as OpenAI to allow flirty interactions, age verification and parental control will necessarily have to be extended to these platforms too. While social media are still barely regulated when it comes to younger users, the EU has to accelerate and comprehensively anticipate new challenges that are in the corner.