EU Moves to Ban Under-13s from Social Media and Outlaw Doomscrolling
Europe just decided that if parents can't peel their kids away from glowing rectangles, Brussels will simply make the rectangles boring on purpose.
The proposed EU KIDS Act essentially wants to scrub childhood clean of algorithmic traps. Kids under 13 get locked out entirely, while 13-to-15-year-olds would be relegated to "mini accounts" tethered directly to their parents with a mandatory one-hour daily limit.
The wildest part isn't the age limit, though — it's the outright ban on manipulative platform design. The bill wipes out infinite scrolling entirely for under-18s. Midnight push notifications pinging half-asleep brains are out. Profiles must default to private with cameras and location tracking killed. Even emotionally clingy AI chatbots are banned from pretending to be a lonely teen's best friend.
To actually enforce this digital walled garden, the bloc wants to roll out a continent-wide age verification app across all 27 member states.
Silicon Valley built an entire business model on hijacking adolescent dopamine receptors, and now European bureaucrats are about to hand teenagers back their bedtimes.
Source: European Commission
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