EU Moves to Ban Social Media for Under-13s

The European Union will ban social media for children under 13 and allow only limited, supervised access until the age of 15, under plans unveiled on Wednesday by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, according to The Local Italy. Von der Leyen framed the move with the phrase 'Europe has power to act', presenting it as a bloc-wide intervention rather than a national one.

The proposal is the most direct attempt yet by Brussels to regulate how minors use large platforms. The Local Italy's report describes a two-tier structure: an outright bar below 13, and a supervised regime between 13 and 15. The detail of how age would be verified, and which platforms fall inside the definition of social media, is not set out in the report.

For Milan the proposal is a business story as much as a regulatory one. The city is the base for a significant share of Italy's advertising, publishing and digital-media sales, and platforms' European advertising rules have a habit of being written in Brussels and priced in Milan. The Local Italy does not quantify the effect on Italian advertising revenue, and no figure should be assumed.

The plan arrives in the same week that Brussels has been unusually active on the movement of people and goods across the bloc's borders, with a further delay to the EU's new entry-exit system reported by the Guardian. Taken together, the two files show a Commission willing to legislate on the daily behaviour of EU residents — where they travel and what their children scroll — and to accept long implementation timetables when member states push back.

Enforcement is the open question. Age assurance for online services has proved technically contested across Europe, and the Commission's own record on digital rules suggests the gap between a Brussels announcement and a working regime in member states can run to years. The Local Italy's report does not name an implementation date, a transition period, or the penalties that platforms would face.

For Lombardy's technology and media employers, the practical effect would be felt in product design and advertising inventory rather than in a single compliance line. Platforms that lose younger users in the EU lose the audience segment advertisers pay least for but plan around longest — the cohort they convert into adult users. Italian publishers, who have long argued that global platforms capture the domestic advertising market without carrying domestic obligations, will read the proposal through that argument.

The proposal now travels the EU's ordinary legislative route, where the European Parliament and member states can amend it. Until that process produces a text, the under-13 ban is a plan rather than a rule, and the supervised-access band between 13 and 15 remains the part most likely to be rewritten. The Local Italy reports no timetable for the negotiations.