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European Union countries looking to impose additional restrictions on social media platforms should be careful not to tread on the European Commission’s toes, a spokesperson for the executive said on Wednesday after Spain announced it would ban social media for under-16s.
“Of course we value the fact that member states want to go a step further, potentially by restricting social media access for kids,” Thomas Regnier, the Commission’s spokesperson for tech, told reporters on Wednesday.
“Taking measures or putting additional obligations on platforms (…) is a clear no-go, because this is regulated by the DSA,” Regnier cautioned, referring to the Digital Services Act, the EU’s landmark rulebook for digital platforms, intended to stamp out illegal content and protect minors online.
“We don’t want to protect only kids in Spain, we want to protect everyone in Europe with the DSA,” he added.
“There is no need to step on the shoes of the DSA.”
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said on Tuesday that his government would introduce social media ban for under-16s and amend its laws to criminalise those “ultimately responsible” for manipulating algorithms, in a bid to protect users from what he called a “digital wild west”.
His announcement has sparked fierce backlash from X owner Elon Musk, who called Sánchez a “tyrant and traitor”.
An increasing number of EU governments are now moving to introduce specific prohibitions on social media platforms for teens, following the Australian government’s world-first measure.
Seven EU countries – Austria, Denmark, France, Greece, Spain, the Netherlands and Portugal – have all either announced or are reportedly contemplating such a ban, citing scientific evidence of adverse psychological impacts.
Some of these countries have already started developing national age-check apps, raising the question of whether an EU-wide approach would be more appropriate.
The European Commission has previously said that national governments are within their right to introduce such bans, but should refrain from introducing extra measures on platforms to avoid clashing with the DSA.
Asked whether national governments were moving quicker than Brussels, the spokesperson said that member states are “acting at the right moment,” adding that the Commission had been developing its own age verification app for the past two years.
With nations coming under more pressure to coordinate their approaches due to the cross-border nature of digital services, the EU executive has brought together a panel of experts to study a potential age restriction on social platforms, after President Ursula von der Leyen said last September that she backed calls for a “digital majority age”.
Spain’s Sánchez said on Tuesday that platforms would be required to introduce age verification systems – “not just check-boxes, but real barriers that work”.
The Commission also seemed to distance itself from Spain’s intention to criminalise the corporate owners of tech platforms, saying that its own rules target the platforms as entities rather than pursuing individuals.
The executive also highlighted its good working relations with tech platforms’ compliance teams, hailing TikTok as “extremely cooperative” with DSA rules.
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