What changed between the plenary report and the adopted text

2. Stresses the need to ensure effective and coherent implementation, enforcement, consistency and complementarity across key EU legal instruments, such as the AVMSD, the GDPR, the DSA, the UCPD, the Digital Markets Act, the AI Act and the forthcoming Digital Fairness Act (DFA), in order to build an integrated framework for protecting children online; calls for the alignment of national measures so as to prevent the fragmentation of child protection in the EU, and to strengthen cooperation and information sharing between national competent authorities and the Commission;

3. Stresses the need to allocate adequate resources, in the context of the 2028-2034 multiannual financial framework, in order to guarantee that the competent authorities and the services within the Commission in charge of implementing and enforcing the relevant digital legislation, have the necessary resources to effectively carry out their work; urges the Member States to increase financial and human resources for Digital Services Coordinators, the European Board for Media Services and other national competent authorities, in order to ensure the effective implementation and enforcement of the relevant EU legislation; stresses the need to provide the staff of the competent authorities dealing with harmful and illegal content with a well-defined framework, and psychological support and assistance;

4. Stresses the importance of the timely appointment of Digital Services Coordinators in all Member States, as a prerequisite for the effective implementation of the DSA; notes, in this regard, the infringement proceedings initiated against some of the Member States; calls on the Commission to support the effective and consistent implementation of the DSA across all Member States, including through guidance, coordination and monitoring and, when necessary, by applying fines and corrective actions, while ensuring a harmonised approach and avoiding market fragmentation;

5. Calls on the Commission, the European Board for Digital Services and the competent national authorities, particularly the Consumer Protection Cooperation Network, to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of measures taken to protect minors on online platforms, while ensuring coordinated enforcement against unfair, misleading or aggressive commercial practices, including social media and influencer marketing, in cases where risks are clearly identified;

Audiovisual Media Services Directive

6. Reiterates that the AVMSD acknowledges the protection of minors as an important policy objective of the EU and contains key provisions, such as Article 28b(1), (2) and (3), to safeguard the better protection of minors online, in particular on video-sharing platforms (VSPs); highlights that the AVMSD requires VSPs to take appropriate measures to protect minors from content that may harm their physical, mental or moral development, e.g. through age verification and parental control tools, and to ensure the protection of the general public from illegal content, as well as harmful and illegal commercial communications; reiterates, furthermore, that VSPs must inform users where content contains advertising, by providing a functionality allowing users to declare such information, and must provide effective media literacy measures and tools;

7. Considers the upcoming revision of the AVMSD a timely opportunity to strengthen the protection of young people against illegal and harmful content on VSPs, including social media platforms, notably by specifying the obligations under Article 28b; stresses, also, the need to reinforce provisions ensuring the prominence of media services of general interest, including by clarifying that such prominence rules can also apply to VSPs to promote access to trustworthy, high-quality and age-appropriate online content; calls, furthermore, for this revision to consider targeted and proportionate measures for detecting, reporting and preventing live streams containing violence, humiliation, incitement to self-harm or other forms of harmful content; underscores the need to evaluate the obligations set out in the AVMSD for Member States to promote and take measures to develop media literacy skills, and determine if such measures need to be further reinforced and expanded;

8. Calls, furthermore, on platform operators hosting live streams, including of video-game content, to require streamers to explicitly label when content includes gambling-like mechanisms, real-money wagering or other age-restricted elements; urges platforms to implement protective defaults for users who are likely to be minors, such as blurring before showing adult-flagged streams, hiding donation or paid gambling overlays from minors’ accounts, and reducing the discoverability of adult-flagged streams on the feeds of minors’ accounts, while ensuring that such measures are proportionate and respect freedom of expression;

9. Calls on the Commission to assess whether current AVMSD definitions fully cover relevant audiovisual media services, especially those provided by influencers and professional content creators on VSPs; requests, in this regard, clarification on the status and responsibilities of such creators to ensure they are subject to the same obligations on advertising transparency and protection of minors as media service providers; calls, furthermore, on the Commission to assess the 2020 Commission guidelines on the practical application of the essential functionality criterion of the definition of a ‘video-sharing platform service’ under the AVMSD, evaluating whether it is fit for purpose in covering all services providing audiovisual media content and their obligations to protect minors online;

10. Stresses the need to assess the implementation of the AVMSD and consider extending its key provisions, such as those on advertising transparency and the protection of minors, to major VSPs; underlines that aligning VSPs’ responsibilities with those of media service providers would help to close regulatory gaps affecting young audiences;

Digital Services Act

11. Welcomes the July 2025 Commission guidelines pursuant to Article 28(4) DSA as a key step in strengthening child protection online, particularly on VSPs and social media, offering practical measures for Digital Services Coordinators and the Commission to enforce the DSA rules effectively, and calls on online platforms to implement high levels of privacy, safety and security for minors online; calls on online platforms to ensure, and calls on the Commission to monitor, the swift implementation of the guidelines; urges, in particular, the simplification of terms and conditions, the implementation of clear, simple and easy-to-use reporting processes, and the provision of appropriate, child-friendly, confidential guidance for younger users on all available tools for privacy, reporting and data protection; stresses the need for privacy-preserving age verification; notes that although the guidelines are not binding, the Commission will use them to evaluate compliance with Article 28(1) DSA; calls for their regular review to address, where appropriate, emerging issues, with additional steps to be taken at EU level, following an assessment by the Commission’s expert group;

12. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to ensure the cohesive and synchronised implementation of the AVMSD and the DSA for the protection of minors on VSPs and on social media platforms, and to examine the coherence and clarity of their application for audiovisual content, bearing in mind the need to ensure an adequate level of protection for users of VSPs;

13. Urges the Commission to clarify the interplay between existing legislation regulating dark patterns, such as the UCPD and the DSA, and to consider reviewing the list of unfair commercial practices under Annex I to the UCPD, in order to close further legal gaps;

General Data Protection Regulation

Data protection and the right to privacy

14. Recalls that the GDPR forms the cornerstone of data protection in the EU, laying down strong safeguards and obligations for the processing of personal data, including important principles such as purpose limitation, data accuracy, data minimisation and accountability, as well as key rights such as the right to erasure (‘right to be forgotten’) enshrined in Article 17 GDPR, while granting children a particularly high level of protection;

15. Stresses that existing GDPR instruments should be duly implemented by service providers; calls for their reinforcement via the application of explicit age-appropriate standards: default maximum privacy settings; the prohibition of targeted profiling of, or advertising to, minors, including for political advertising; minimalist data collection; and terms and conditions explained in a way that minors can understand; encourages the development of guidelines and best practices for safe default settings for minors, including measures such as the deactivation of the ‘autoplay’ function, limitations to infinite scrolling, the enabling of a ‘reset feed’ option, the setting of time limits, periodic prompts to take a break and the restriction of notifications, in order to ensure the digital well-being of children and young people;

16. Urges the Member States to allocate sufficient resources to data protection and consumer protection authorities, in order to effectively investigate and sanction practices that use the personal data of minors, in violation of EU law;

17. Asks the Commission to evaluate existing gaps in the prohibition of targeted advertising, and to consider a comprehensive ban, in order to eliminate a major driver of manipulative design and behavioural profiling;

18. Regrets that, since the GDPR’s entry into force, many providers have inadequately implemented its requirements; underlines the urgent need for stronger enforcement of the GDPR and to consider additional guidance, by Member States’ data protection authorities and the Commission, on its application to AI systems targeting or accessible to minors; recalls that AI systems must ensure that, in line with the GDPR, users can easily exercise their right to have personal data erased, including personal data inferred;

19. Calls on the Commission to ensure the enforcement of existing transparency obligations, under the GDPR and the DSA, regarding data permission for accessing photos or automatic location sharing, which may increase the risk of privacy violations and stalking, disproportionately affecting women and girls;

Upcoming Digital Fairness Act

20. Welcomes the Commission’s fitness check of EU consumer law on digital fairness; calls on the Commission, within the framework of the forthcoming DFA, to identify and close existing relevant regulatory gaps, particularly regarding addictive and manipulative design features of digital services, including dark patterns, personalised advertising practices, neuromarketing, loot boxes, in-app currencies in video games and unfair commercial practices by influencers; stresses that the main objective of the new legislative initiative should be to strengthen the protection of children and young users online, while avoiding overlaps with existing legislation; stresses the need for dedicated research into neuromarketing and its effects on children and young people; calls on the Commission to ensure that the forthcoming DFA addresses this issue;

AI Act

21. Recognises the potential of AI to enhance learning, creativity and entrepreneurship among young people, including through personalised guidance, innovation in the arts and media, and access to new forms of economic participation;

22. Stresses that minors’ increasing ease of access to, and use of, generative AI tools, including AI tools specifically designed for minors, and AI-driven youth-facing services, such as chatbots, personalisation engines, recommender systems, deepfake technologies and algorithmic content filters, present new risks to children’s mental health and cognitive and social development, due to integrated bias, manipulation or purposely manipulative techniques, privacy intrusion, and the spread of misinformation;

23. Calls on the Commission to enforce the AI Act’s obligations, specifically on transparency, including by watermarking and labelling AI-generated content, and calls on online platforms to implement swift procedures for the removal of falsified or harmful content; underlines, furthermore, the need for protective default settings against engagement-driven design in such services and for explanations of how automated systems work;

Emotional companions

24. Highlights the risks posed by ‘AI companions’ that simulate virtual friendships, warning that they can exploit minors’ emotional vulnerability, foster dependency and harvest sensitive psychological data; recalls that the AI Act prohibits, under certain conditions, AI systems capable of deploying manipulative techniques or exploiting the vulnerabilities of natural persons; warns that interactions with these tools, in a number of cases, have contributed to suicides; stresses the need for clear regulation and mandatory ethical standards on the design and use of these systems in order to prevent manipulation, including prominent disclosures that the interlocutor is an AI, default safety modes for minors, requirements to direct users expressing self-harm ideation to helplines, strict age-verification mechanisms for chat interfaces and to ensure that those safeguards specifically consider girls’ increased exposure to emotional manipulation and grooming; calls on the Commission to assess the impact of these technologies in the framework of any future strategy for the digital safety of children and to bring forward, if necessary, an EU code of conduct on conversational AI for minors;

AI systems integrated into toys and smart devices

25. Recalls that AI systems integrated into toys and smart devices for children are classified as high-risk under the AI Act when they are safety components, or when those systems are the toy itself; stresses that these systems are often used without an adequate understanding of the risks involved; notes that, where such AI is used, it must comply with strict requirements regarding transparency, data governance, safety and oversight;

Social risks relating to AI-generated content

26. Calls on the Member States and online platforms to ensure that AI product evaluation and labelling frameworks adequately reflect the impact on young users’ rights and their mental health; calls on online platforms to carry out dedicated child and youth impact reviews for AI systems likely to affect minors, in line with the best interests of the child; urges the Member States and the Commission to ensure that AI risk classification mechanisms and risk management obligations under the AI Act and the DSA systematically take into account the impact on young users’ rights, mental health and social inclusion, including through mandatory child-focused evaluations, complementing existing audit and redress mechanisms;

Gender bias and discrimination in AI systems

Gender-biased training datasets

27. Notes that AI training datasets often reflect entrenched stereotypes, resulting in biased recommendation algorithms and content-ordering systems, including the promotion of misogynistic communities, sexualised AI-generated images, pro-anorexia and self-harm content, as well as discriminatory moderation practices; calls for the systematic auditing of training data and algorithmic outputs using gender-sensitive indicators, as well as for scenario testing to examine how recommender systems expose minors to such content, and for platforms to demonstrate measures that prevent harmful content escalation;

28. Calls for improved transparency regarding the training of AI models, including clear information on the datasets and materials used, particularly for AI systems used or likely to be accessed by children and young people; stresses that such transparency should be accompanied by child safeguarding measures to prevent exposure to harmful, biased or inappropriate content; calls for the establishment of a code of conduct setting industry standards for transparency, accountability and child protection in the development of these technologies; recalls that the AI Act requires providers of high-risk AI systems to ensure that their training, validation and testing datasets are relevant, sufficiently representative, and to the best extent possible, free of errors and complete, in view of the intended purpose of the high-risk AI systems;

Inclusion: biased algorithms and discrimination

29. Highlights the need to prevent algorithmic bias and discrimination affecting young people; calls on online platforms to commission regular independent audits and implement transparent reporting mechanisms to monitor and correct systemic bias in AI-driven educational, employment and social media systems;

Obligations, transparency and possible solutions

Safeguard measures

30. Calls on the Commission, in coordination with the Member States, to develop guidelines on the use of AI systems impacting children, in order to prioritise precautionary measures against engagement-driven design, including protective default settings and understandable explanations of how automated systems work, while ensuring that AI used by children remains safe and available for use;

31. Voices concern about AI assistants regularly misrepresenting news content in their outputs; calls on providers of AI assistants to collaborate with the media sector to improve AI assistants’ responses and outputs; calls on the Commission, the Member States and relevant regulatory authorities to effectively apply relevant EU media and digital laws with a view to promoting public interest objectives in AI, such as media pluralism, and to prevent AI-assisted searches from undermining the general public’s trust in news and its access to reliable information;

Scams and fraud: specific measures against ‘celebrity scams’

32. Expresses concern over the proliferation of AI-generated content impersonating media professionals and brands, for commercial gain or for the dissemination of disinformation or ‘celebrity scams’; urges online platforms to increase mitigation, in this regard, and urges the Commission to classify celebrity scams as a systematic risk and intensify ongoing investigations under the DSA; encourages the Commission to consider adopting more efficient measures, including legislation, to protect minors from deception, while also ensuring effective redress for media organisations and their employees affected by these unlawful practices;

33. Expresses concern over dangerous online challenges and disinformation targeting minors; calls for an EU-level rapid alert mechanism in this regard, in cooperation with Safer Internet Centres; calls for better enforcement, based on the current risk assessments by very large online platforms; demands more robust and data-driven systemic assessments to accurately identify and mitigate specific threats to children’s safety;

AI-generated content and deepfakes

34. Expresses concern about the growing spread of AI-generated sexualised images, manipulated content and deepfakes designed to deceive, bully, body-shame and manipulate young people, thereby eroding their trust and safety in digital environments;

35. Calls for the explicit ban of AI systems generating, manipulating or altering realistic images or videos depicting sexually explicit activities or intimate parts of an identifiable natural person without that person’s consent, and synthetic child sexual abuse material (CSAM), since they are listed explicitly in the prohibited practices under the AI Act; notes that such systems disproportionately target girls and young women, including those in the public sphere, and calls for their deployment, placement on the market or use to be aligned with an ‘unacceptable risk’ classification, so as to ensure consistent enforcement across the EU;

36. Calls for the development of comprehensive, accessible and child-appropriate reporting mechanisms and support services that are proportionate, compliant with children’s rights and fundamentally centred on education, prevention and accountability, specifically for minors affected by image-based abuse;

37. Calls for specific actions to be taken to prevent intimate partner violence, among and affecting young people, in the digital environment, encompassing acts such as revenge porn, deepfake pornography, hacking, impersonation, and the use of technology to control or limit a partner’s online behaviour; calls on the Member States to better educate young people about this threat;

38. Stresses, furthermore, that legislation on gender-based violence must explicitly apply to immersive technologies, such as virtual reality, online gaming platforms and the metaverse, to address non-consensual sexual acts and coerced interactions in virtual spaces;

39. Recalls that tackling online sexual abuse and exploitation is essential to addressing the impact of social media on young people; stresses the importance of reinforcing the legal framework, in this regard, and recognises the recast of Directive 2011/93/EUas a key measure for strengthening child protection online;

40. Reiterates its position of 16 November 2023 on the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council laying down rules to prevent and combat child sexual abuse (COM(2022)0209), which underlines that detection measures put in place should be targeted, proportionate, subject to judicial oversight and undertaken in respect of fundamental rights, without undermining or circumventing the end-to-end encryption and confidentiality of the communications of all users by automatically and generally scanning encrypted communications; highlights that weakening encryption would undermine trust and security in digital services;

41. Highlights that the Member States’ legal systems do not keep up with the development and emergence of new types of CSAM, including synthetic, AI-generated CSAM as well as non-consensual intimate deepfakes, and calls for the criminalisation of the creation, possession and distribution of all types of CSAM regardless of the method of creation, and to require the swift takedown and cross-platform hashing of known abuse material, to stop it from reappearing;

42. Insists that tackling online sexual abuse and exploitation must also be done through prevention, reporting tools, education and appropriate law enforcement methods; urges the Commission and the Member States to ensure that victims have access to victim-centred and effective legal remedies; highlights the importance of accessible, confidential and child-friendly reporting channels that are based on safety and privacy by design, and that include specialised psychological and legal assistance for young victims and their parents; recalls that privacy is necessary for victims of abuse to protect their safety and increase their ability to seek help;

43. Highlights that all young people are affected by social media harms, including exposure to unrealistic body ideals, harassment, grooming and the non-consensual sharing of intimate material; underlines, however, that girls and young women are more exposed to social media harms, and are therefore disproportionately affected, particularly by body image pressure, harassment, misogynistic content and gender-based pressures, which can contribute to eating disorders, anorexia, self-harming behaviours and, in severe cases, extreme actions; stresses, therefore, the need for gender-sensitive digital safeguards to ensure safe, inclusive and empowering online environments for all young users; calls on online platforms to implement swift mechanisms for reporting and removing misogynistic content, to prevent algorithmic recommendations that amplify gender stereotypes, and to support positive campaigns on body image and gender equality;

Cyberbullying and online harassment

44. Stresses the importance of cyberbullying prevention and response tools, including awareness programmes, educational resources for teachers and families, and peer support structures, such as anti-bullying programmes; highlights the need to treat online and offline bullying holistically, recognising their interconnected nature;