EU Plans Under-13 Social Media Ban, and Italy Watches the Age Line

The European Union will ban social media for children under thirteen and permit only limited, supervised access until the age of fifteen, under plans unveiled by the Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, according to The Local Italy. The proposals also cover games and AI assistants, and would place an obligation on companies to make platforms safe before minors use them at all.

The framing used in Brussels is that Europe has the power to act, and that the burden of safety should sit with the platforms rather than with parents alone. Age verification is the mechanism on which the whole scheme turns, and it is also the point at which the proposal meets its hardest practical questions.

For a region like Calabria, where the school-age population has been shrinking for years and where the distance between the coast and the mountain interior shapes what services reach children, the enforcement question is the one that will be asked.