On Protection of minors online

A.whereas 97 % of young people use the internet daily; whereas one in four children and young people display ‘problematic’ or ‘dysfunctional’ smartphone use, meaning behavioural patterns mirroring addiction; whereas research suggests that the rise in mental health problems in adolescents may be related to excessive social media use, and social media pressure has been identified as one of the top five causes of mental health difficulties for minors; whereas the World Health Organization recognises gaming addiction as a mental health disorder;

B.whereas at present, no EU legislation sufficiently addresses the protection of minors across the digital ecosystems; whereas minors should enjoy a high level of protection on all online platforms, irrespective of their size;

C.whereas the Digital Services Act (DSA) recognises the protection of minors as an important policy objective of the Union and includes key provisions to ensure better protection of minors online, such as Article 14(3), Article 28, Article 34(1)(d), Article 35(1)(j) and Article 44(1)(j);

D.whereas there is an urgent need to enforce current EU legislation and to address outstanding challenges in order to create a safe online environment for all users, in particular minors; whereas minors should enjoy a higher level of protection online;

E.whereas the freedom of expression and of information, as guaranteed by the DSA, does not impede the implementation of effective measures for the protection of minors online;

Enforcement of the Digital Services Act

1.Stresses that the DSA requires online platforms that are accessible to minors to put in place appropriate and proportionate measures to ensure that minors benefit from a high level of privacy, safety and security when using their services;

2.Urges the Commission to swiftly adopt ambitious and pragmatic guidelines on the protection of minors online in accordance with the DSA, and stresses that these guidelines should contain recommendations specifying how online platforms are to implement high levels of privacy, safety and security for minors online;

3.Stresses the importance of the swift implementation and effective enforcement of the DSA, as a whole, in order to achieve the objective of guaranteeing a safe online environment for minors; welcomes, in particular, the ongoing Commission investigations under the DSA in the field of the protection of minors online, which focus, in particular, on addictive behaviour, the ‘rabbit hole’ phenomenon, age verification tools and recommender systems; urges the Commission to conclude its investigations imminently and to take any additional steps needed, including fines and effective corrective measures, in accordance with the rules established under the DSA;

4.Expresses concern about the spread of dangerous trends and challenges on online platforms, noting that these could harm minors; calls on the Commission to establish an efficient rapid alert mechanism at EU level to detect such issues;

5.Stresses that the risk assessments carried out by very large online platforms and very large online search engines in line with the DSA with regard to the safety of minors online are inadequate, lack independent oversight and underestimate the risks posed to minors; calls on the Commission to make full use of the tools available under the DSA to address these issues;

6.Recalls that the Commission and the Member States have a shared responsibility when it comes to the enforcement of the DSA; expresses concern that there are significant delays in designating and/or empowering Digital Services Coordinators (DSCs) in several Member States; welcomes the infringement procedures opened against a number of Member States that have failed to designate and/or empower DSCs; urges the Member States that have not yet done so to designate and empower DSCs without delay; calls on the Commission to ensure a harmonised approach to enforcement actions by Member States in order to prevent fragmentation in the internal market;

Age verification

7.Highlights the fact that there is currently a fragmented approach to age assurance and age verification across the EU, and that this leads to fragmentation in the internal market; regrets the fact that the different national approaches may result in an uneven level of protection of minors in the EU;

8.Calls on the Commission to put forward recommendations for effective age assurance or age verification mechanisms to protect minors online, in accordance with the DSA, as a first step, and to present appropriate legislative measures if necessary;

9.Highlights the fact that several providers of online platforms have put in place mechanisms to control and/or verify who can access their services; stresses that despite these mechanisms, minors are, to a large extent, viewing content that is not age-appropriate; stresses that the current mechanisms can be circumvented easily and that their use needs to be complemented by strong safeguards to guarantee a sufficient level of protection of minors online;

Parental control

10.Stresses that the DSA requires online platforms to ensure that effective safeguards are in place to protect vulnerable groups, such as minors; highlights the fact that providers of online platforms that are accessible to minors may put in place parental control measures to allow parents and guardians to help protect minors against the risk of exposure to harmful content; emphasises that online platforms should not use these tools as a reason to transfer their responsibility to protect minors online to parents;

11.Expresses concern that parents often lack adequate tools to monitor and manage minors’ online activities or are unaware of the tools available to them; notes that even when parental control tools are used, minors can easily circumvent them; stresses the importance of ensuring that such tools are user-friendly, intuitive and easily understood by parents; urges the platforms to take greater responsibility in promoting and improving the effectiveness of parental control systems, and calls on them to publish relevant data on the effectiveness of these systems;

Filling the gaps in current EU legislation

Digital addiction

12.Stresses that the addictive use of digital products and services carries the risk of economic, physical and mental harm, including to minors but not exclusively to them; highlights the fact that addictive design features are inherent to the business model of platforms, resulting in the commercial exploitation of minors; further highlights the fact that addictive design could also manifest itself in algorithmic recommender systems that prioritise emotive and extreme content to maximise user engagement; is concerned that online platforms may push minors into harmful ‘rabbit holes’ of toxic content; calls on the Commission to propose legislation that mandates safety by design, requesting that all platforms include the necessary safeguards in their recommender systems;

13.Stresses that features such as ‘infinite scrolling’, ‘auto play’, ‘pull to refresh’, rewards for continuous use and penalties for inactivity are aimed at influencing minors’ decision-making, drawing them in with manipulative strategies that are aimed at increasing their engagement and the amount of time and money they spend online;

14.Stresses that certain features of digital services, such as the ‘like’ mechanism, are seen as promoting approval-seeking behaviour and social comparison and undermining self-acceptance and self-worth when the desired feedback is not received, and highlights the fact that they are a powerful motivator for engagement;

15.Calls on the Commission to propose a horizontal legislative initiative that would tackle the issue of addictive design and prohibit addictive design features; calls on the Commission and the Member States to address the issue of excessive screen time;

Dark patterns

16.Stresses that 97 % of the most popular websites and apps used by EU consumers deploy at least one dark pattern; stresses that minors are particularly vulnerable to dark patterns; underlines that because of their developmental stage and psychological vulnerabilities, minors are more easily manipulated into, for example, sharing personal data or making unintended online purchases;

17.Stresses that there is no single comprehensive EU regulation on dark patterns; stresses that the scope of the prohibition of dark patterns in the DSA is limited to online platforms; stresses that only a limited number of dark patterns are directly prohibited by the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive and that none of the current prohibitions refer specifically to digital interfaces; is concerned that this results in legal uncertainty for consumers, including minors, and businesses;

18.Urges the Commission to review the list of unfair commercial practices contained in Annex I to the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive in order to clearly prohibit dark patterns such as giving more prominence to certain choices when asking consumers for a decision, requesting that consumers make a choice that has already been made, making it difficult to change the default settings, using emotional language to steer consumers towards certain choices, using ambiguous language to confuse consumers when asking them for a decision, indicating that other people are currently also interested in certain products or services or that only a few items are left, or indicating that many people recently purchased a particular product;

Video games

19.Highlights the fact that video games fall within the scope of the DSA insofar as they qualify as an intermediary service or a platform; calls on the Commission to vigorously enforce the relevant provisions of the DSA; stresses, however, that the providers of video games that do not qualify as intermediary services or platforms are not subject to the rules laid down in the DSA;

20.Expresses concern that video games are increasingly a commercial environment for minors and often involve the sale of virtual items, including uncertainty-based rewards and gambling-like mechanisms such as loot boxes, and the use of intermediate in-app virtual currencies, which could distort the real value of the transaction and the real price of each individual purchase;

21.Stresses that there is no EU legislation that specifically regulates features such as virtual items or in-app currencies; stresses that some Member States have adopted national laws to further regulate gaming and that this leads to market fragmentation, which is detrimental to consumers and EU companies;

22.Urges the Commission to ensure that the upcoming Digital Fairness Act guarantees a high level of protection for minors who play video games, in particular by prohibiting loot boxes, in-app currencies, pay-to-progress and pay-to-win mechanisms, and other randomised content in exchange for real money in games that are likely to be accessed by minors;

23.Welcomes the enforcement efforts made by the Consumer Protection Cooperation Network in the field of video games to protect minors from harmful practices; urges the Commission to propose a revision of the CPC Regulation to ensure that the Commission has centralised investigative powers across the EU in cases where consumers could be harmed;

Targeted advertising

24.Highlights the fact that minors need more protection from behavioural monitoring and influencing; stresses that the DSA bans targeted advertising to minors on online platforms; stresses that this ban does not apply to other traders and digital services that may engage in personalised advertising; calls on the Commission to introduce equivalent obligations that would be applicable to all traders;

Influencer marketing

25.Highlights the fact that EU consumer law only partly addresses the issues posed by influencer marketing, and that the promotion of dangerous and risky financial products by influencers, the promotion of unhealthy food to minors by influencers and the harmful commercial practices involved in influencer marketing remain a reality;

26.Highlights the fact that consumers, including minors, face a lack of transparency about the paid promotion of products by social media influencers and have difficulty distinguishing between commercial and non-commercial content;

27.Calls on the Commission to ban commercial practices that include the direct or indirect promotion by influencers of products, trends, challenges or behaviours that are unhealthy or dangerous for minors, such as diets or beauty routines that have no scientific basis or are inappropriate for young people, or gambling, including sports betting and prognostics;

28.Calls on the Commission to adapt EU rules, including by clarifying the responsibilities of platforms and other actors in the value chain, such as the brands whose products and services are being promoted;

Artificial intelligence

29.Underlines the increasing ease of access to generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools that are accessible to minors; highlights the risks regarding transparency, training data, manipulation and AI anthropomorphism, all of which can result in a distortion of reality and lead users to make unintended online purchases and share personal data;

30.Highlights how the AI Act is addressing the systemic risks posed by AI systems, including those used in content generation, recommendation systems and user interaction on online platforms; calls for the swift implementation of the transparency obligations arising from the AI Act, in particular with regard to the effective watermarking of AI-generated content on online platforms;

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31.Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council and the Commission.