The European Parliament has joined the push to make the internet safer for children. However, its members are looking beyond social media, targeting everything from addictive design and influencer marketing to the commercial exploitation of children online.
Lawmakers voted in favour of the report by Sandro Ruotolo (S&D/ITA), with 395 votes in favour, 136 against, and 80 abstentions. The result is not a law but a set of recommendations. In theory, it falls to the Commission to decide which of them, if any, become binding rules. In practice, the EU’s executive already showed it agreed, proposing many overlapping measures mere hours before the vote.
The overlap is substantial, but the two texts are not identical. Parliament’s report, which has already been in the works for several months, calls for an EU code of conduct for influencers and stronger safeguards against “kidfluencing” and “sharenting”. The Commission’s EU KIDS Act focuses on a wider regulatory framework covering social media, video-sharing platforms, online games, AI companions and chatbots.
Parliament’s demands meet the KIDS Act
One of the report’s main demands is a ban on the most harmful addictive practices, including addictive design and highly personalised recommendation systems that keep users engaged. Lawmakers also want a “youth mode” that would, among other things, switch off targeted advertising for minors.
The Commission’s KIDS Act takes a similar approach. It would require platforms to remove features such as infinite scroll and reward mechanisms, restrict profiling-based feeds for minors and ban push notifications during sleeping hours. It would also require services to give children more control over recommendation systems and prohibit personalised advertising based on their previous activity.
However, Mr Ruotolo warns that a youth mode should not become an excuse for leaving the platform models unchanged. “A youth mode must never become an alibi for preserving an unsafe business model,” he told EU Perspectives in July.
Addictive design is already an enforcement issue under EU law. In February, the European Commission found TikTok in preliminary breach of the Digital Services Act over features such as infinite scrolling, autoplay, push notifications and highly personalised recommender systems. The Commission says TikTok failed to assess how these features could affect users’ physical and mental wellbeing.
Now, the draft KIDS Act goes a step further, banning social media platforms from designing and operating their services “in a manner that is intended, or can reasonably be foreseen, to encourage compulsive or excessive use of the online social networking services and of video-sharing platform services by minors”.
Parliament points to influencers
In some ways, Parliament’s report goes beyond the features targeted by the Commission’s proposal, also focusing on the commercial ecosystem around children’s online lives.
Lawmakers want an EU code of conduct for influencers and a common definition of “influencer marketing”. They also want stronger protection against “kidfluencing” (children who become commercial content creators) and “sharenting” (parents extensively documenting their children’s lives online).
Life without the algorithm
Europe is not alone in questioning the role algorithms play in keeping people on social media. Australia is proposing to give users more control over what determines their feeds: under the government’s “My Feed, My Way” initiative, platforms would have to ask users whether they want their default feed to contain personalised content. The country became the first to ban social media for minors in 2025.
New York is taking a similar approach. Its SAFE for Kids Act will restrict algorithmically personalised “addictive feeds” for users under 18 unless platforms obtain parental consent. Instead, young users can receive content from accounts they follow.
Protecting children cannot become an excuse for the mass collection of identity documents or personal data. — Sandro Ruotolo, MEP (S&D/ITA)
For Mr Ruotolo, age limits alone would not address the underlying problem. Any system for checking age also needs to protect privacy. “Protecting children cannot become an excuse for the mass collection of identity documents or personal data,” he told EU Perspectives, arguing that Europe needs age checks that do not create new forms of surveillance.
In the KIDS Act, the Commission proposes age verification through privacy-preserving tools, including the EU age-verification app. It uses a “zero-knowledge proof”, meaning that the service learns only whether someone meets the required age, without retaining identity documents or biometric information.
Recommendations meet legislation
Parliament’s vote therefore comes as the Commission moves from recommendations towards legislation. The KIDS Act incorporates several of the concerns raised by lawmakers, particularly around addictive design, recommender systems, age assurance and AI companions. But the Parliament report also calls for measures that are not at the centre of the Commission’s proposal, including an EU code of conduct for influencers and stronger safeguards against the commercial exploitation of children online.
The Commission’s proposal now goes to the European Parliament and EU governments for negotiation. Parliament’s report, meanwhile, is non-binding. But Thursday’s vote gives lawmakers a formal position from which to push for stronger protections as the KIDS Act moves through the legislative process.
