Brussels plans to bar under-15s from opening their own social media and chatbot accounts

The European Commission is preparing an EU Kids Act that would stop children under 15 from opening their own accounts on social media, video-sharing sites, online games and AI chatbots. Reuters, Euronews and AFP have seen draft language. Ursula von der Leyen is expected to preview the plan in her State of the Union speech this week. The legal text is due on Thursday, 17 September, with tech chief Henna Virkkunen.

The draft uses age bands rather than a single switch. Children under 3 would have no access. Ages 3 to 12 would be limited to child-friendly services through accounts that parents fully control. Ages 13 and 14 could use introductory accounts on social media and video platforms, opened by a parent, with limited contacts and hard time caps. From 15, a young person could open an account in their own name.

The scope is wider than the national bans already moving through France, Greece, Spain and several other capitals. The Commission text treats social apps, video platforms and games as services with specific design risks for minors. It also covers AI chatbots and companions, which the draft describes as virtual tools that can give mental health and personal development advice to children. Spain and the Netherlands asked last week for games and companions to sit inside the same file.

Platforms would have to check age when a social or video account is created and before a child downloads a game. Existing accounts would face proportionate checks rather than a one-time purge. Default settings would keep children’s accounts private, switch off contact from unknown users, and strip features the Commission calls addictive, including infinite scroll. Companies would have to offer parental controls and a simple way for a child to report harm.

Very large platforms could wait up to 30 days for Brussels to clear new features that affect minors. Firms would pay a supervisory fee to fund national regulators. Fines could reach 6 percent of global turnover, the same ceiling used in other EU digital files. For a company the size of Meta, that figure sits in the low tens of billions of dollars if a maximum penalty were ever applied.

The proposal is not law. It needs the European Parliament and the Council, and that process usually takes many months. Ten member states are already writing or debating their own age limits. The Commission’s argument for an EU text is fragmentation: a patchwork of national cut-offs would leave the same app under different rules in Lisbon and Warsaw. The leaked communication calls Union-level action the most appropriate way forward.

The political fight will sit on three points. First, age assurance. The draft assumes platforms can tell a 14-year-old from a 16-year-old without collecting a new stack of identity documents. France has already tested that claim and found it harder than the speeches. Second, the list of services. Games publishers and chatbot makers will argue they are not social networks. The draft treats design risk, not the corporate category, as the test. Third, the fee. Platforms will call it a tax on enforcement they already fund under the Digital Services Act.

Von der Leyen will put the file next to Ukraine, industrial policy and the economy in Strasbourg. That placement is a signal. Child safety online has moved from a consumer file to a headline of the Commission’s year. The text still has to survive national capitals that want either a harder ban or a lighter one. Until then, the number that matters is 15: the age at which Brussels wants a child in the Union to be able to open an account without a parent in the loop.