Youth Online Safety – Are Social Media Age Bans a Solution? – WS 06 2026

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27 May 2026 | 14:30 - 15:30 CEST | SICCO MANSHOLT | Video recording | Transcript
Consolidated programme 2026

Proposals: #13, (#14), #16, #20, #23, #32, #33, #38, #52, #60

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Session teaser

Several countries, European and beyond, are discussing the introduction of social media age restrictions, amounting to bans for children. But do these measures serve the purpose of protecting children from illegal and harmful content?

Session description

Several countries, European and beyond, are discussing the introduction of social media age restrictions, amounting to bans for children. Australia banned social media for under-16s last year, France has adopted a similar law, and Spain and Denmark are considering the same. The possibility of introducing social media age bans to harmonize the ban at the EU level is being discussed by the European Commission, while MEPs approved an opinion addressing how social media and the online environment affect young people, in support of an age limit.

But do these measures serve the purpose of protecting children from illegal and harmful content? Are total bans the only viable path forward? How can the age of children and young people be verified precisely and in a way that preserves their privacy? What is the reaction of youth towards these measures, and how involved are they in the debate? Are young people's voices meaningfully consulted in serious and sustained ways and translated into active policy shaping? What does the Australian example tell us? Can children circumvent such a measure? France is going after VPNs to prevent circumvention. What is next?

Format

  1. Technical/organisational advice by EuroDIG staff (1 min)
  2. Welcome and introduction to the workshop by Jutta Croll (4 min)
  3. Youth perspective by Diya Aravinthan (5 min)
  4. Industry perspective by Lennart Wetzel (5min)
  5. Technical perspective by Carmela Troncoso (5min)
  6. Regulation perspective by Andrea Tognoni (5 min)
  7. Open discussion with all participants and attendances (30 min)
  8. Formulating messages by rapporteur Desara Dushi (3 min)
  9. Farewell by Jutta Croll (2 min)

Further reading

People

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  • First Name Last Name, Affiliation/institution

Programme Committee member(s)

  • Desara Dushi, EU Policy Counsel at the Future of Privacy Forum
  • Frances Douglas-Thomson, MA honours student in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, at the University of Edinburgh
  • Minda Moreira, Internet Rights and Principles Coalition (IRPC)

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Focal Point

  • Torsten Krause, Stiftung Digitale Chancen

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Organising Team (Org Team)

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  • Murillo Salvador
  • Diana Ceausu
  • Karen Mulberry, Senior Manager, Public Affairs, IEEE Standards Association (IEEE SA)
  • Luc Delany
  • Maciej Gron, NASK Poland

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Key Participants

  • Moderation:
    Jutta Croll, Chairwoman of the Board Stiftung Digitale Chancen, on site
  • Technical/academia:
    Carmela Troncoso, SPRING Security and Privacy Engineering, Max-Planck-Institute, online
  • Youth:
    BIK youth ambassador Diya Aravinthan, on site
  • Politics/regulation:
    Andrea Tognoni, European Commission, on site
  • Industry:
    Lennart Wetzel, Head of EU Public Policy at Snap Inc., on site

Key Participants are experts willing to provide their knowledge during a session – not necessarily on stage. Key Participants should contribute to the session planning process and keep statements short and punchy during the session. They will be selected and assigned by the Org Team, ensuring a stakeholder balanced dialogue also considering gender and geographical balance. Please provide short CV’s of the Key Participants involved in your session at the Wiki or link to another source.

Messages

Rapporteur: Desara Dushi, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

  1. Blanket age bans risk oversimplifying a complex issue rather than reducing harms. It is important to fully understand the complexity of the issue which includes and requires among others child participation, hearing all expert voices, learning from international partners, and putting children’s rights at the center. More viable solutions would be an age-appropriate design system, combining safety by design (with more focus on for ex. age inappropriate content and algorithms) with youth voices embedded earlier in the regulatory design and holding platforms more accountable.
  2. It is important for policies to also focus on privacy, proportionality and accuracy. We need to continue the work towards harmonizing age verification measures, digital literacy and meaningful engagement with young people themselves. Any measures taken need to be centered around child rights, youth participation, and be harmonized.
  3. Technical instruments to implement age bans can be privacy invasive while not guaranteeing for no more harms. There is a need to carefully assess the real-world effectiveness and proportionality of age restrictions. In terms of implementation, the technology is challenging and may negatively affect inclusion and push children towards more dangerous environments. From a security perspective regulating platforms would have a better benefits vs. harms ratio.
  4. We should move away from the idea that bans will get rid of everything and change everything. Age restrictions/bans should be considered not in isolation but within current policy and regulatory context, which at European level is multi-layered and includes several national and EU level initiatives. We should be aware of the distinction between regulating access and regulating content.
  5. We should be aware that this is a social issue, and the focus should not be on arbitrary age gates, but rather on mitigating the harms that users encounter through attention-exploiting, profit-driven algorithms. Digital literacy and education alone cannot help us.

Video record

https://youtu.be/-YczLolNnpc

Transcript

Disclaimer: This is not an official record of the session. The DiploAI system automatically generates these resources from the audiovisual recording. Resources are presented in their original format, as provided by the AI (e.g. including any spelling mistakes). The accuracy of these resources cannot be guaranteed.

The Geneva Internet Platform will provide transcript, session report and additional details shortly after the session.


Diya Aravinthan: Thank you so much, Isa, for that lovely introduction and good afternoon, everyone. It’s definitely so encouraging and inspiring to see so many people here today who are very interested in protecting the young people in Europe and also worldwide. And I’d just like to share the youth perspective. I’d like to start off by saying that I think protecting children, especially online, is definitely a shared goal and it’s not something that anyone disagrees with. But I think that the real question is not whether we should do it, but how do we do it in a way that’s effective, proportionate, and also actually reflects how digital environments work today. And one concern that I wanted to talk about was this idea of blanket age bands.

These are very appealing, obviously, and quite easy to facilitate, but they also risk oversimplifying a much more complex problem that we have today with social media. And evidence from existing restrictions online shows that when access is restricted, young people don’t just disappear from online platforms, but instead they use other ways to access them, such as VPNs, shared accounts, or bypassing age restrictions. So the underlying exposure to the risk that we’re trying to mitigate by implementing these age bands doesn’t necessarily decrease, but it just becomes much more harder to monitor and address, which makes it difficult to… Highlight the issues or the… risks that are being implemented on young children. And I think another important thing to consider is the differences in the use case of social media between various generations.

For example, surveys conducted by the University of Canberra who were targeting Australian youth post the social media ban for under 16 year olds say that actually their media literacy in a sense is somewhat stagnated because they’re not able to access news and learn about current events because they learn about that through social media rather than maybe traditional media sites or newspapers. And so this is just one specific case. There are lots of different cases on social media, for example, children who find a safe community online or those who really rely on friends that they have online. And so restricting social media would essentially restrict them from having a safe space online, which is also another way that social media is used amongst young people.

Which is why… I think that we need to move… away from this very binary thinking of access or no access and instead focus on more layered protection systems for children. So one promising direction would be more age -appropriate design regulation in the platforms and in the apps themselves. And we can already see this in practice in frameworks like the UK’s age -appropriate design code, which doesn’t necessarily remove access for minors, but instead requires platforms to change how exactly they operate for younger users. So this includes the default choice being high in privacy, limits on profiling for targeted advertising, and also adjustments to how features and feeds are designed and presented. And linked to that is also the question of age assurance, like how exactly are platforms able to effectively determine the age of the platform?

And I think that it can definitely play a role, but only if it’s designed to carefully because the key principle should be that platforms don’t need to know exactly, or platforms don’t need to know the age of exactly, or who exactly the person is, but be able to treat young people the same, no matter who they are, just to, no matter who they are, with the priority of protecting them regardless, or inclusive of their age. And so emerging approaches in the European Union include the Digital Services Act, including third -party verification, or maybe token -based systems, and those sorts of ideas point in that direction. But they also raise important concerns about scalability, how can we implement this in other social media platforms, trust, and also ensuring that we don’t end up building infrastructure that normalizes unnecessary data collection of minors.

But I also think that the fundamental issue is not just who gets access, but what systems children are entering. when they’re online. Platform design also plays a much larger role than we think in shaping risk. Recommendation systems such as algorithms and feeds, so on TikTok, for example, the For You page, it plays a much larger role in shaping risk. And so this means that users, especially minors who maybe are not cognitively developed enough to recognize what exactly is harmful content and what is positive content, aren’t just exposed to content passively, but also are actively guided towards content that maximizes attention, decreases attention span, and also this content can include harmful, extreme, or also addictive material.

So I think from a more regulatory perspective, I would argue that focusing only on age gates and these very binary restrictions on under 16 -year -olds cannot use social media and over 16 -year -olds can. Would miss a very key leverage point because a more effective approach should be having stronger or holding platforms more accountable for the way that they amplify their content and target it towards younger people. So for minors in particular, this would be limiting or fully rethinking personalized recommendation feeds for default and also requiring safer and less engagement -driven design choices. And so in my view, reducing algorithmic amplification of harm would have a more direct impact than simply restricting access if it’s complemented with safer or more options for children to protect their privacy and safety online.

And I know you have to stay, but we will go into the discussion and then I will get that wraps up my point. Thank you.

Jutta Croll: Okay. I took the opportunity because we were already talking about what platform to use. So I’m going to go into the discussion and then I took the opportunity to interrupt you because you were already talking about what platforms could do or should do. And that’s the perfect segue to Leonard coming from Snapchat. where he is the Senior Manager for EU Public Policy. And, Lennart the floor is yours. What should you do? I’m sure we do.

Lennart Wetzel: I think that’s the $1 million question. Thank you so much, Jutta. Thank you so much to the organizers for the kind invitation and bringing together such an important and timely discussion. By way of a brief introduction, Snap operates Snapchat. Snapchat is a, I guess, popular platform for visual communication with friends and families. Snapchat opens into the camera different to, I think, some of the other well -known, more traditional social media platforms. Snapchat was built during a time when social media was becoming a popularity contest with users chasing likes, comments, and followers, and Snapchat was designed to offer people an alternative. Until today, Snapchat’s number one use case is staying. connected with France. We made deliberate design choices to help, for instance, prevent the spread of harmful misinformation, which includes moderating user content before it can reach a large audience, and we don’t offer live streaming on the platform.

However, I want to make one point very clear. We are not perfect, and we all need to do more to better protect minors online. Platforms carry a significant responsibility here. I also believe that expectations from parents, policymakers, researchers, and society more broadly towards platforms have rightly increased over recent years. From our perspectives, that means that platform must continuously invest in safety by design, age -appropriate safeguards, effective content moderation, and tools that generally support parents and young people. This is definitely not a one -off exercise and not something that we can do all the time. We have to make sure that we are able to do it all the time. That should only be popping up in press releases, but it’s an ongoing responsibility.

At the same time, we believe it’s equally important that policy responses are evidence -based, proportionate, and effective and practice. Not all digital services functions in the same way, not all platforms present the same risks, and not all usage patterns lead to the same outcomes. This is precisely why a risk -based approach to regulation is so important. The DSA is a very good example here. It already requires platforms like Snapchat to systematically assess risks for minors and implement appropriate mitigation measures. Is it a perfect framework? Perhaps not. I think it’s maybe something that we’re going to discuss further, but it’s been an important step into the right direction. In the current debate around social media bans and access restriction, Australia, and I think it was mentioned previously, is the most important part of the discussion.

It’s a prominent example and it’s being watched very closely around the world. Snapchat, for instance, has locked or disabled more than 415 ,000 accounts in order to comply with the law. At the same time, we’ve been seeing a number of practical challenges emerging. First, young people do not stop communicating online when access to selected services is restricted. Rather, usage may shift towards alternative or even less regulated or less safe services. Second, there are important technical challenges around age assurance. Current technologies are not perfect, particularly for minors. Even small error rates can have significantly consequences at scale. Some teenagers may still gain access, while others may be wrongly excluded. This is why it’s so important that discussions around age verification in Europe also focus on privacy, proportionality, accuracy, and practical implementation.

We are currently seeing a growing number of national initiatives across Europe around age restriction and access limitations. Which risk creating fragmentation across the EU and the single market and inconsistency. standards for miners’ protection. At the same time, we believe fragmented service -by -service age verification models risk creating additional privacy and cybersecurity concerns. This is why we believe it’s important to continue advancing the ongoing EU -level work in this area, including effective enforcement of existing rule, in particular the DSA, as well as further work around the EU digital identity wallet and the EU age verification solution to address remaining practical and technical challenges related to privacy -preserving age verification, particularly for miners, before pivoting towards more far -reaching measures.

Lastly, I think we’ve heard it a thousand times, and I’ve been working in the tech industry for like all my life, basically, but sustainable protection of miners also inquires investment in digital literacy, digital skills, parental empowerment, and meaningful engagement with young people themselves. And I believe this is one of the most important things that we’re working on. And I think that’s one of the reasons why we’re… sitting here today. Young people use digital services not only for entertainment, but also for communication, creativity, learning, and civic engagement. Our shared objective should therefore be to make digital spaces safer and more age -appropriate, and not simply to exclude young people.

Jutta Croll: Thank you, Len. It’s fantastic. Within your five minutes, I’m very precise, but you have been talking about also the technical challenges, and this turns us to our next speaker, which is Carmela Trocoso. She’s with us online, and she focuses on building and deploying secure and privacy -preserving systems that minimize societal harms, and she focuses on critically analyzing technologies with respect to the protection they provide. So, Carmela, the floor is yours. We are happy to have you here with us, also not in the room. And please go ahead with your five minutes and nine.

Carmela Troncoso: Thank you. Can you hear me? Can you hear me?

Jutta Croll: Sound, please, a bit louder, if that’s possible.

Carmela Troncoso: Yes, I can speak sound. Yeah, does that work better?

Jutta Croll: I think it’s okay.

Carmela Troncoso: Okay, so we’re going to talk from a technical perspective. I mean, Desk was already mentioned, if we want to implement an HVAN, we need the means, the technological means, to know the age of users in a way that cheating is not possible because otherwise the measure is moot. And technical measures that we have to implement these are known to be easily think -inventable. We already have spoken about this, and to my understanding, the latest studies in Australia says that two -thirds of the minors are still on social media. Like, this is more than half are still accessing that place. And making them less circumventable leads in general to a decrease in privacy overall. For example, by banning virtual private networks, which is an essential privacy tool for our society, or increasing data collection to try to prevent the kind of circumvention.

And unfortunately, this could also affect measures like the other way around, where we try to create children -specific spaces. We still have problems in which we cannot really assess age in a good way. And also, these kind of measures, from a technical perspective, we already have heard this from Leonard and from Leah, they are very privacy -invasive. And what I want to bring from the technical side is that this is inherent to how they work in the case of using biometrics, in the case of using behavioral data from the network, like what kind of pages you visit or what kind of content you look at. All of these things normalize collection, and we cannot make them without having the data, right?

And the way that would be non -privacy -invasive is to rely on certificates like the European Digital Identity Wallet or the Neuron. So, we have a new age verification solution, which kind of sounds nice, and we can indeed technologically do this, collecting much less data and revealing much less data. but it is first the solution is not fully ready yet and second would bring a lot of exclusion to those not being able to use the technology we have a lot of not savvy people they already mentioned that there are different kind of literacy levels here maybe people that don’t have the right hardware that actually can use this type of wallets or verification solutions or people that don’t have access to certificate including children I don’t know the rest of Europe but at least in Spain it is not mandatory for children to have IDs and actually introducing such a solution or creating children specific spaces based on this technology would mean that now every child also needs to mandatory have an ID and again get more collection about the data that we have avoided for years and years in our society and also including privacy technologies cannot be used as a magic wand to just wave the idea that no more harms are going to come from this technologies because discrimination that can be introduced by the possibility of introducing HX or further tech of data online cannot be solved even if we have privacy technologies.

We also have the problem of diminishing the safety online, as we were saying, maybe because people move to other platforms that have less assurance, as Leonard was saying, but also because when they want to circumvent these measures, they end up kind of finding cheap virtual private network providers that may actually be even more privacy invasive, collect their data, sell their data to others, so essentially push users to a market or to places in the internet that before they didn’t need to go. So when we think about is HBAN or H verification a solution that should be deployed, it is important to realize that this is not about, oh, we will have all the gains that we imagined versus all the harms and which is better.

It is actually, we will have very few benefits because not all of the miners are going to be left out of the technology, of the places we wanted to prevent them from coming. And we actually will have all the harms. And what is important here is that we need to, before moving forward, kind of check what is actually the gains that we’re going to get. Because we know that the harms exist, including the harms, as you were saying, of miners maybe not being able to access online data, online news, online communities that nowadays are beneficial for them. So what is actually the benefit? Because otherwise implementing these blanket bans or even the non -blanket bans might actually bring us to a place where we have more harm than benefit.

And I also wanted to reinforce that from a technical, from a security technical perspective, from security engineering, actually, the conclusion from Nia that tackling the content on the platforms and making the content safer, not only for children, but for everyone. is actually a much better benefit versus harm solution than trying to make all of these check the ages and try to make separation on the Internet because we don’t have technologies that allow this to do it in a safe way.

Jutta Croll: Thank you, Carmela for your explanations and for the deep insight into what technology can do and what it can’t probably do or what problems technology might also cause when not well implemented. I’m turning now to Andrea Tognoni. He’s representing here the European Commission somehow. He’s a case handler at the Digital Services Act Protection of Minors and Other Societal Risk Unit at the Director General for Communication Networks, Content and Technology, the DG Connect, as it is known. Andrea, and you’re also… I’m also responsible… responsibly organizing the special panel that Ursula von der Leyen has assembled. And there, I do think we have a good segue to what the Commission has already been doing with the Digital Services Act, Article 28, but also with the guidelines, where some of the things that have been mentioned from the platform side, but also from Mia and from Carmela might already be in.

Could you give us your position, please?

Andrea Tognoni: Thank you, Jutta, and everyone who’s following the event. It’s a pleasure to be here. Does it work? Should it be working? No? Louder. Okay. Well, this is the difficulty and the great thing of speaking last. A lot of things have already been said, so I could also not say too much, but there’s also so much more that now I want to cover and respond to. I’m glad that we will have the conversation after this. I think hearing the interventions before, I just wanted to put forward, let’s say, three main points, the last one being indeed the work of the panel, which we are, by all means, not single-handedly organizing, but it’s really being a commission.

I’ll give you a concerted effort. So the first one is indeed trying to move beyond, as you said, this yes or no to a ban, but also to move beyond a conversation whereby the ban is an alternative to everything else. I think we need to see potential restrictions or, as our president has recently referred to, delays in context. And the context is indeed one that is, first of all, seeing, as it was mentioned also by Helena, several member states moving to regulate this point at national level. So there is also a digital single market question open there. There is a context of a lot of action that is already taking place. I think some of it was mentioned.

I, of course, am really proud to say that we are a team that is working, specifically on the implementation and enforcement of the DSA with regard to the protection of minors, and we’re responsible. but also for the Article 28 guidelines, which we think already set very, very high standards in terms of safety by design and a lot of age-appropriate design requirements that were mentioned as a possible solution. And that is only one instrument in a way. I think we should not forget everything else that the Commission is also doing. There is the AI Act, which is kicking in in terms of implementation and enforcement. The MSD, Audiovisual Media Services Directive, which focuses on content that is being reviewed and in a way strengthened specifically on the protection of minors points.

There is the incredible activity of the Better Internet for Kids Strategy and Ambassadors, of course, and the Safer Internet Centres that are a network of raising awareness and helping really children. And raising awareness on online safety. nationally. So we should move away, I think, from this discussion whereby the ban will sort of get rid of everything that is already going. I think it should be thought in an integrated way. I think we need also to remember that some age restrictions already exist, and I’m not talking about Australia, which has implemented their, as they call it as well, delay. But I’m talking about restrictions to access, for example, pornographic content or restrictions for gambling, restrictions including, they’re not conceived as such, but including for the very online platforms that many of us have in mind to not have children below 13 on their services.

And we are, as a commission, enforcing some of these existing age limits, notably with preliminary findings recently on pornographic platforms. On Meta, as well, we have also issued an opening decision against the provider Snapchat on this topic. This is also part of this context that we need to take. And within this context, I think we need to move beyond just considering a potential ban as something that will start tomorrow and will change everything. I think no law and no restriction in any sector has ever worked like this. But of course, something that, as it was said by many speakers, if it is conceived and implemented, needs to be done properly. So considering, for sure, children’s rights at its core, and the fundamental rights of everyone, of course, as any EU law.

It needs to be based on child participation. I think in particular, as it was mentioned by the BAKM ambassador next to me, to understand the contours of the problem, the real pinpoint, the issues that we’re trying to solve, knowing that this… the landscape is not the same where the TSA was adopted, when the AI was adopted. So we need to also see this in flux in a way, but also be mindful of, I think, having some linguistic carefulness. So not equating, for example, age verification with the ban or with age assurance and age estimation with age verification. I think that doesn’t help necessarily the debate on how delays, let’s say, if they need to happen, can happen properly.

And, of course, ultimately making sure that we hear all voices and children in particular. It’s of paramount importance. And I think this is also what the panel that the president on the line has set up is trying to do. seeking out a lot of expertise on this topic and on everything around it, on this context that is also made of education, of health care services, of mental health delivery at national or subnational level. And I can only speak on process on that because the recommendations are known to me, but I think that we’re all looking forward to those recommendations in this room. So thank you.

Jutta Croll: Thank you so much, Andrea. Before we open the floor to the participants in the room and also to the online participants, I would like to pose a question in both directions because the DSA was already mentioned. You mentioned also that on national level in various countries that are also represented here at EURODIG Things are going underway. We have expert commissions. Some countries have already enacted some law or have legislation in development. And this is all in many times argued by the national governments that the commission hasn’t done enough to enforce the Digital Services Act, especially Article 28. And I do think we can have a great dispute whether it has been enough from the side of the platforms.

I know we have also Stephanie Quintao from TikTok here in the room. Maybe you can also come in, whether you feel there was enough enforcement. And what are you thinking, Andrea? And, of course, the question also goes to you, Diya Maybe the platforms first.

Lennart Wetzel: Sure. I think it’s not on us to judge the European Commission’s enforcement effort, but maybe a few observations, I think. And this is what you, Jutta, just alluded to. I think just listening to concerns across the EU from, I guess, policymakers, civil society, NGOs, experts in the field, I think there is a perceived ineffectiveness, or maybe to put it differently, maybe there’s not enough change in the industry that’s basically observed by experts. So I think this is, I think we all know that I think this has been driving some of the concerns and related initiatives around social media bans across Europe. And I think this is unfortunate because we’ve, at SNAP, we’re always strong advocates of the Digital Services Act.

This might sound a bit odd, but we were. we were aligned, like, at the beginning of the process with, like, the core tenants of the DSA when it comes to transparency, privacy, you know, user controls and all of that. And, of course, we’ve, you know, we’ve spent significant efforts in adjusting, you know, all the processes to be in a position where we comply with the letter of the law. So this is clear. I alluded to it previously. Is that a perfect framework? Potentially not. I think it’s something that, you know, needs to be continuously reviewed and improved, and it’s our understanding that this is what the Commission is doing. I mean, there’s, Andrea mentioned the Article 28 guidelines that were published last year.

There’s a review process currently underway to our understanding. So we see also on part of the European Commission a constant effort to making sure that the framework works as best as it can. So I think it’s ongoing work, and it requires ongoing dialogue. Between service providers and the European Commission, and that is working well, at least in our case.

Jutta Croll: I’ve seen your hand. I just want to bring in also the TikTok perspective and then going back to Andrea and Diya because we are now in a situation where I do think it’s neither in the interest of the platforms to have different age thresholds across European countries, nor it’s in the interest of the Commission to have that situation that we have faced with the GDPR article 8. But we ended up in a situation where we probably might go in that direction, although no one wants to go in these different age thresholds and different legislation. So, Stefanie, are you ready to get in?

Stefanie Quintao: Hi. Yes. I’m not an official speaker, so I don’t want to take up anyone’s time. But thank you, Jutta. So for allowing me to participate. So obviously, whatever decision that the European Parliament and Commission determine, we will comply. But outside of my role at TikTok, I was working for several years under child protection against child sexual abuse online with the organization called We Protect. And many youth -led organizations and child rights organizations often highlight the fact that the voices of young people are missing in this debate and that we should listen to their perspectives as we are today. And I think we should really listen to these organizations who might feel that a social media ban is more of a blunt tool and instrument.

And we have the opportunity now to protect children across all platforms. And give them a uniform experience across all different forms of online engagement. And several different organizations have rightly pointed out that there is the risk that they will… go to more unregulated spaces of the internet with less protections, less ability to report without trusted flaggers, for instance. I believe it was our experts online who also mentioned this possibility. So it’s something for us to collectively talk about. It’s obviously a concern for many tech companies. But I think we have the real life case study in Australia, which is rare. And we should sort of observe what’s happening in Australia and take learnings and insights from their experience to make sure that we have a harmonized approach that is meaningful and impactful to protecting young people across all digital spaces.

Jutta Croll: Yes. Thank you so much for your perspective. Andrea, what do you think? You could do more on enforcement. And then also you may refer to child participation in the whole process as well, because children have already been engaged in the DSA guidelines development. You may also refer to that, Andrea, for sure.

Andrea Tognoni: yeah so on enforcement I mean of course I cannot comment on enforcement yes well yeah I will say on enforcement I would never comment on enforcement cases and open proceedings what I would say is that the DSA has been adopted in 2022 has fully entered into force a bit more than two years ago and I think enforcement is really accelerating thanks to the fact that we have been I mean the commission and DigiConnect has been putting all the work possible and the resources possible into setting up this enforcement framework which I think now I think now can always, of course, improve and evolve, but I think we can already see that it starts to get into a more regular pace.

I think only this year we had more opening decisions. We started having more regularly the first preliminary findings and decisions. We had some secondary legislation to pass as well to apply some important articles. I mean, we’re talking about protection of minors, so the Article 28 guidelines were, I think, a very important milestone and also a way to specify our expectations, our sort of benchmarks for compliance for an article that admittedly reads very generally and it’s very outcome -based and future -proof, if one may say, but indeed needed some further detail. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. acquiring a good speed in and I think can even further accelerate. Will this be enough to you know, in public perception? I think that’s a million dollar question for any regulator and any public authority. I think there is always public scrutiny on doing more. I think that is positive. It’s also what keeps this development sort of going. Just on child participation, I would really say that it’s fundamental for us at DigiConnect and this was a central element, as you said, of the development of the guidelines. It is being a very central consideration as well in the process of the special panel.

But of course, it hasn’t started with the guidelines or with the special panel. It has been developed and it has been developed and it has been there as an approach with the Better Intern for Kids Strategy and other also initiative of other colleagues in other DGs of the Commission for a long time. So with this regard, I think that we certainly, you know,

Jutta Croll: Yes, thank you. Diya what do you think? Enough enforcement, enough participation.

Diya Aravinthan: I don’t know if I can really speak to the technicalities of the DSA, but I think one thing that both Leonard and Andreas mentioned was, or something I can say is that because digital platforms and social media is so ever -evolving, that enforcement, like you said, that it can’t really be this end -all, be -all solution, and it has to sort of also evolve with how platforms develop. I mean, we can consider the example of artificial intelligence, where even if we enforce certain legislation, both country or state or nation specific, or the entire EU, it is really difficult, because there are new features and new technologies that are being developed every single day. And so I think…

that’s sort of why we need to bring in more literacy, as Leonard mentioned, and overall just preparing youth to face social media and the Internet, no matter what exactly the regulations are. But, yeah, that’s my thoughts.

Jutta Croll: Thank you. Thank you, Diya I’m turning to Camila just to announce that maybe you can come in later on answering the question whether technology to keep users at large safer is always lagging behind those technological developments that new functionalities of social media but also of other digital services. But first, we had a hand in the back there, the woman with the red hair. Then the second one, and the floor is open to you as well. You have online? Okay. Okay, so we go first there.

On-site participant: Thank you so much, Liliana, NGO North Macedonia. So I just want to jump on from the very beginning. Someone mentioned access or no taxes. We’re not talking about taxes. And on these gatherings and this topic, we frequently jump from two different layers. Is it access that we’re regulating or the content that we want to actually discuss or to dissolve the issue? I don’t think that age restriction basically can replace the social media accountability, but also digital literacy as it is or harmful content for kids. So what is the issue that we want to resolve with the age restriction is something that I think we need to agree on from this panel. Also, I would want to ask a specific question.

Who governs the age verification infrastructure? Who governs the age verification infrastructure? Have we discussed about it enough in terms of which laws, regulations, data transferability between regions and even countries? Who is going to be the owner of the data and who can, I don’t want to jump in with the GDPR, but definitely with the privacy issues. So, in terms of governance models in age verification infrastructure, is it going to be, again, private companies behind it? Thank you.

Jutta Croll: Thank you so much. I’ve noted some of our questions and I hope we will have enough time to go to address all of them.

On-site participant: Yeah, Frederik Taas, I’m a member of the Internet Society Belgian Chapter and also a champion of the Internet Society. I’m also a member of the EURALO, the European At -Large Organization for Representing and Users in ICANN. But I will speak on my own with the question I have heard many things, many good things about technologies and policies, but what about the children and the human side and education? I’ll just give you an example. Crossing the street, danger everywhere for children. You are crossing the street, you cannot fix everything with technology, with legislation. If you have a little child just walking and then, oh, you can go across the street because technologies and regulations are there.

No, it’s not working. There’s education. We educate the children to keep the hands of a responsible adult, to learn how to cross the street and then progressively to learn the rules. Okay, I need to cross there. There are the lines, the traffic lights. I need to watch left first and then right. And in some other areas, it’s first right and then left and then progressively. And here, it’s really black or white. There is legislation. There is a law. There is regulation, technologies, but it will not fix everything. We need to invest much more in education. That’s my message. Thank you.

Jutta Croll: Yes. Again, thank you for your message I hand over now to the online

On-site participant: Yes, hi So I have a question from T. Kraus From the Stiftung Digitale Chancen So the question is for the two gentlemen And the question is In the debate surrounding social media bans Many children and young people feel that they are being blamed For the problems and risks that exist online The guidelines on Article 28 provide recommendations And guidance But are not binding on service providers Would making these guidelines mandatory Be a viable way of providing greater incentives For service providers to offer safe services for young people

Jutta Croll: Okay, thank you for that question If I understood right It goes to Leonard and to Andrea

Lennart Wetzel: Thank you Jutta, but I mean speaking about the Article 28 guidelines, we understand this is part of our ongoing compliance work with the Digital Services Act and we are in a very constructive and good dialogue on that with the European Commission.

Andrea Tognoni: I think, I mean, I would maybe seek to clarify a nuance that is not as clear if we just say the guidelines are not binding. The guidelines reflect the Commission expectation as to how compliance with Article 28, which is a legal obligation can happen. So whether they need to be codified into to sort of hard instrument. This is not a question that we can sort of answer at this stage, but I just wanted to clarify that point. They’re not let’s say just random recommendations that we one day decided to

Jutta Croll: There have been so many efforts going to the guidelines that I’m really happy you’re saying they are not random recommendations. I have a hand there and then in the back row.

On-site participant: My name is Stephen. I’m a student in Datification, Digital Literacy and Internet UNESCO, but I speak on behalf of my own. I have a question aimed at Mr. Wessel. How would you react to the comments around some of the features of platforms that aim at maximizing user attraction, such as per -click revenue, algorithms and filter bubbles? And how can this coexist with advocating at the same time for protecting children against online doom -scrolling and addiction, for instance? Thank you.

Lennart Wetzel: And I think I tried to do it in the beginning of my remarks. I think at Snap, we were very deliberate when it came to the design of our platform. I think there was deliberate design choices to, I think, also react to some of the trends we’ve been, you know, back then we’ve been observing on social media more broadly. And, of course, I think one of these concerns was around, you know, content that I would post online that would stay there forever. I think our immediate reaction to that was to build the platform around the principle of ephemerality, which is basically self -deleting content and messages. At the same time, I think there’s an important emerging discussion on specific features on online platforms that are perceived as harmful and addictive.

But we’ve always said over the past few months that I think it’s very important to not look at features in isolation, but look at features and how they apply in a specific context of a service or a platform. So I think it would be risky if we would take a feature like ephemeral content in isolation and say it’s perceived risky, because our experience with having ephemeral content and messages on our platform is that it’s been a key building block of how we protect the privacy of our users. And I think this not only goes to ephemeral content. I think this goes to a broad range of features that are currently being part of this discussion, that it’s always important to…

to take a look at the broader context of a service and then do an assessment of whether a certain feature basically brings along certain risks. So, yes, I think it’s an important discussion, but I think it’s really about

Jutta Croll: Thank you, Leonard. I think we go back to the risk -based approach a bit later. We have only 12 minutes left, so this is the last question from the floor, and then we go back.

On-site participant: Thank you for giving me the right to speak, Jutta. I’m Alexander Pitsch from the Internet Society Switzerland chapter. I have more of a statement rather than a question, and I would like to explicitly state that we are talking about a social problem and not a technical problem, and it’s very dangerous to fall into the pitfall of applying techno -solutionism to a social problem. The problem is not can we technically identify age within a range of plus or minus three days, right? The problem is that online spaces on mainstream social media platforms are unsafe spaces. This is for children. and adults. So the problems of misinformation, which has been discussed at this conference, the problem of privacy invasion, the problems of mental health problems or causation of mental health problems or social media addictions are not limited to children.

And we should, rather than focusing on symptomatic attempts to mitigate the problem, tackle the root cause of it, and that is surveillance capitalism, right? Platforms, as they are now, have the economic incentive to keep users exposed on the platforms for as long of a time as possible and show them as much advertisement as possible. This is an economic incentive, which is at the root of the problem. And that’s a social problem. This is not a technical decision. It’s not given, God given, that social media algorithms have to be driven by these economic imperatives. There are alternatives. the NLNet Foundation is building them or helping build them. We heard about Mastodon, and this should be the focus of the policy and not some construed, actually not oversimplified problems, but misdirected attempts rather than tackling the root issue.

Jutta Croll: Thank you, Alex. I do think we have been talking about trying out oversimplified solutions, not oversimplified problems. The problems are complex, and we can’t find simple solutions to the complex problems. Going back to the technical questions, Carmela what do you think about? Are we lagging behind with technical approaches to solve the issues? And I know you are a privacy expert, so you can probably also refer to the privacy question that we have around age assurance. Age inference, age verification, so the floor is yours again.

Carmela Troncoso: so first notwithstanding that I agree that this is a social problem and shouldn’t have a technical solution when we talk about the solution at the policy level we also need to talk about the technical implementation and before it was said that we should treat these two problems separately the ban on industrial verification but I’m sorry I wish but we cannot because to measure harms and benefits we need to measure the harms and benefits of the implementation not for the ideal kind of conception of what this thing would be and this is why these two things are entrenched and here is where all of these technical problems like the privacy problems come into hand as I was saying before for some of these technologies the privacy problems are inherent to the fact that the technology relies on collecting data about users and inferring things about them in order to make decisions so we cannot really separate this thing or making it in a privacy preserving way no matter how much cryptography I want to throw at the problem And in terms of your question of are we actually lagging behind, I think that we need to flip the question and we need to say that actually the problem is not that privacy technologies or protection technologies lag behind.

The problem is that technology is running too fast. The problem is that we are deploying technologies that are harmful. And then we want another technology to come and solve the problem. But the real thing here, like all of these algorithms that we’re discussing right now, right, that they create these addictions, that they show this content that they enable, that is the real problem. And for some of them, it’s actually even very hard to actually find the protection because the goal of the algorithm, which is to kind of recommend content in a way that is the most profitable for the platform. It doesn’t matter, again, how much cryptography I send to it. It doesn’t matter how.

I can build this in a protective way. The only way to build it in a protective way is to remove the functionality of the algorithm. So I think. When we look at technologies, we look at us and say, like, hey, guys, why don’t you protect us or why can’t you go behind? In some of these cases, maybe we need to take a step back and say, well, should we actually be deploying this? Can we deploy it in an even safer way rather than just deploying technologies and then be wondering why we cannot protect them? Because some of them are just, like I said, inherently kind of harmful. And then it’s not that we’re lagging behind.

It’s that we will never catch up.

Jutta Croll: Yes, thank you so much for your input on this point. I do think we are close to the end of the session. Let me eventually refer to that example that we heard about education. I do think that everybody is agreeing in the room that we can’t have a technical approach without having an educational approach. Digital literacy is key, definitely. But also we have to bear in mind that if we are following a risk -based approach, then sometimes digital literacy education alone cannot help us. We need it, but it needs to be accompanied. Like you had that traffic example, of course we have some streets where it’s really safe to walk the streets, across the streets, even for smaller children.

But in some places we need the traffic lights to regulate that they are really safe times when they can cross the street. And the same counts for the digital environment. And I do think the European Commission is following a risk -based approach with the DSA to make sure that we have not one -size -fits -all approach. Depending on the risks of the functionalities on certain types of platforms, we need an approach that fits into that. We will use the last four minutes, turning to Desara. tried to summarize and have some messages that we can take out of this room. And I’m pretty sure we will be able to continue the discussions during coffee break afterwards.

We could have afforded 90 minutes for this session. I think many of you wanted to come in, but these are the time restrictions.

Desara Dushi: Hello. Yes, thank you very much everyone for a very lively discussion. I’m very happy to see all of you here and being so engaged in this very important topic. I tried to summarize the main ideas but it’s very difficult because there’s a lot of ideas and I’m happy about that. If we can share the screen so that everybody can see. I’m going to read. The ideas are very rough the messages but the idea is to have a general agreement from the audience and then we will try to refine them. So the first message is that blanket age bans risk oversimplifying a complex issue rather than reducing harms. It is important to fully understand the complexity of the issue which includes and requires among others child participation, hearing all expert voices, learning from international partners and putting children at the center.

More viable solutions would be an age appropriate design system, safety by design with more focus on for example age inappropriate material and algorithms. with youth voices embedded earlier in the regulatory design and holding platforms more accountable. The second message is, it is important for policies to also focus on privacy, proportionality and accuracy. We need to continue the work towards harmonized age verification measures, digital literacy and meaningful engagement with young people themselves. Any measures taken need to be centered around child rights, youth participation and be harmonized. The third one is technical. measures to implement age -bends, privacy -invasive, while not assuring a situation of no more harms. There is a need to carefully assess the real -world effectiveness and proportionality of blanket restrictions.

In terms of implementation, the technology is not working yet and can negatively affect inclusion and pushes children towards more dangerous environments. From a security perspective, regulating platforms would have a better benefits versus harms solution. The last one is we should move away from the idea that bends will get rid of everything and change everything. Age restrictions or bends should be considered not in isolation but with current policy and regulatory context, which at European level is multi -layered and includes several national and EU -level initiatives. And we must make the distinction between regulating access and regulating content. T

Jutta Croll: hank you so much, Desara, for also quickly reading out the questions. Thank you. So, would anyone in the room raise their hand and being completely not in consent with these messages? Otherwise, as Desara said before, we will review them again afterwards and maybe try to be a bit more concise. We have covered a lot of things already, but what about my panelists, my speakers? Could you agree with Desara’s messages? More or less, Andrea?

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