Abstract

The European Commission’s review of consumer protection in the digital world from 3 October 2024 shows that protection of minors should be reinforced in all areas. The European Parliament’s 2023 resolution on addictive design of online services highlights the negative impact that addictive design may have on consumers, including mental health problems, especially on minors. 31% of consumers reported spending more time or money than they intended because of certain features of a digital service, such as automatically playing videos, receiving rewards for continued use of the service or being penalized for inactivity online. In the first half of 2024, the Commission initiated formal proceedings against providers of Facebook, Instagram and Tik Tok for what it considered insufficient protection of children on these platforms, including for using functionalities that make users dependent on social media. As early as 2021, the European Commission indicated that children’s online presence increases their exposure to harmful or illegal content in the absence of effective parental controls or age verification systems. All of this means that the dangers, which the Internet poses to children, are known to EU policymakers.
This article examines provisions in force at the EU level to protect minors from harmful content online. In 2018 the EU amended the Audiovisual Directive. Protection of minors, originally limited to television and VOD (streaming) services, was reinforced and extended to video sharing platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Tik Tok, X, YouTube. Furthermore, greater changes have recently occurred under the DSA’s regulation of online platforms and search engines and under the European Media Freedom Act, which will be fully and directly applicable in EU member states from 8 August 2025. Below, I will look at these pieces of legislation, how they overlap, and which areas of the Internet are still outside their regulations.