EU KIDS Act Aims to Ban Under‑13 Access and Enforce “Safe‑by‑Design” for All Minors
What Happened — The European Commission released its EU KIDS Act proposal, which would prohibit children under 13 from creating social‑media accounts and require platforms to implement “mini‑accounts” for ages 13‑15, enforce screen‑time caps, and ban addictive UI features and profiling‑based feeds. The draft also mandates AI chatbots be disabled by default for minors and that all minors’ profiles be private by default.
Why It Matters for Trust & Control Assurance
- Age‑verification and consent mechanisms are a core control that continuous‑monitoring programs must evidence to satisfy privacy‑by‑design requirements.
- The “safe‑by‑design” UI restrictions map directly to control objectives around user‑experience safeguards and data‑minimisation, which auditors will expect documented proof of.
- Verisq’s CookiePLUS Privacy capability can help organizations capture, manage, and demonstrate compliance with these new consent, age‑verification, and UI‑design controls across multiple frameworks.
Who Is Affected – Social‑media platforms, online video‑sharing services, gaming portals, and AI‑chatbot providers (tech‑SaaS, media, and broader digital‑service firms).
Recommended Actions
- Conduct a gap analysis of current age‑verification, consent, and UI‑design controls against the proposed EU KIDS requirements.
- Deploy a privacy‑consent management solution that logs evidence of age checks, parental approvals, and UI‑feature restrictions for audit readiness.
- Update internal policies and incident‑response playbooks to cover mandatory screen‑time limits and AI‑chatbot deactivation for minors.
Source: The Record
Technical Notes – The proposal does not reference a specific vulnerability; it introduces regulatory controls on user‑interface design (e.g., banning infinite scroll, reward tricks, push notifications at night) and on AI‑driven personalization. Enforcement will likely rely on platform‑level logging and third‑party audits. Source: EC press release