Report from Biometric Update
In Brief – The European Commission’s special panel on child safety online delivered its report calling for age-based tiers of access and regulation for social media and other digital platforms to protect young people while preserving their rights online. The panel recommends that toddlers under three not have access to screens, children between 3 and 12 have only supervised access, and teens 13- to-18 have access only to platforms that employ a series of safety features. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called for coordinated action at the European level based on input from parents, educators, experts, young people and member states. The panel’s 14 recommendations include involving minors in the design of online safety policies, strengthening complaint mechanisms, consumer rights, and digital literacy education. The report also urges the EU to consider harmonized restrictions on access to social media and other digital services for children under 13, as well as requiring digital platforms to use age checks that protect fundamental rights and avoid processing identity documents or biometric data, including so-called zero-knowledge proofs.
Context – In line with the EU’s public policy tradition, the child safety expert panel is not calling for anything like Australia’s simple social media age limit of 16 which is spurring copycat efforts in a growing number of countries. It does recommend keeping kids under 13 off most platforms unless supervised, but online age limits of 13 have existed for many years. The report is really about requiring technical online age enforcement, which the EU believes can be “privacy protecting” while many experts disagree, and then regulating how the platforms operate for those under 18. The comparable is not Australia, it’s more Brazil with its Digital Statute of Children and Adolescents. Brazil requires minors under 16 to link their social media accounts to a legal guardian, platforms to use effective age and identity verification systems, and prohibits platforms from employing so-called “addictive” features. Like the EU, Brazil is a giant market, and major platforms have been rolling out compliance features.