The proposed EU KIDS Act builds on several of the themes developed by the Special Panel on child safety online. The Panel’s wider recommendations provide important context for understanding the policy approach behind the proposal and what it could mean for BIK+.
Beyond age restrictions
Can children be protected online simply by keeping them away from social media? In recent months, this question has moved to the centre of the European debate. In this context, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tasked two Special Advisers, Prof. Dr. Jörg M. Fegert and Dr. Maria Melchior, with co-chairing a Special Panel on child safety online between March and June 2026. The Panel brought together academics, practitioners, young people, and parent representatives, looking in turn at the scientific evidence, existing EU and national rules, and possible recommendations to better protect and empower children online.
The resulting report, presented in July 2026, gives a clear answer to the opening question. Age restrictions matter, but on their own they are not enough. The report takes a broader approach to protecting and empowering children across what it calls the "social media+" environment*. Its overall aim is to support a digital environment in which children can grow up safely while gaining age-appropriate autonomy.
Since then, the debate has moved on. In her State of the Union address (SOTEU) on 16 September 2026, President von der Leyen announced an EU KIDS Act, which the Commission proposed the following day. The proposed Regulation would introduce EU-wide rules on minors' access to social networking and video-sharing services, as well as safety-by-design requirements for a wider range of services, including online games, AI chatbots, and AI companions. The proposal explicitly takes the Panel's report as its starting point, so its recommendations are no longer only expert advice.
Certainly, the report does not dismiss age restrictions, but it makes clear that responsibility for child safety should not rest primarily with children, parents, or caregivers. Digital service providers retain primary responsibility for the safety of their services, and it is up to them, not regulators or families, to prove that those services are safe for minors.
This reflects a broader understanding of child safety online as a shared responsibility. Digital service providers are expected to create safer, age-appropriate environments; the EU and national authorities have a role in regulation, enforcement, evaluation, and research; parents, caregivers, and professionals provide guidance and support; and children should gradually develop the skills to navigate digital environments safely and to take part in shaping them.
The report organises this broader approach around six guiding principles: a developmental approach; equality and diversity; protection of minors; accountability of digital service providers; empowerment and media education; and children’s rights and participation. Taken together, these principles point to three shifts in the approach to child safety online. First, protection should reflect children’s different ages, developmental stages, and individual circumstances. Second, greater responsibility should be placed on providers to create safer digital environments by design. Third, protection should be combined with empowerment, education, and opportunities for children to participate safely and meaningfully in the digital world.
This wider perspective is particularly relevant to the Better Internet for Kids strategy (BIK+), which similarly combines protection with digital empowerment and active participation. In fact, the report itself points to Better Internet for Kids (BIK) and the network of Safer Internet Centres as initiatives that can strengthen children's critical thinking and resilience to disinformation, and it calls for their continued public funding. The following sections explore how some of the Special Panel's recommendations could reinforce the different dimensions of BIK+ in practice.
Different ages, different needs
Understandings of childhood have varied considerably across history. In earlier societies, where child labour was often an economic necessity, children were largely treated as "small adults", and their specific needs were not recognised. With the rise of modern disciplines such as developmental medicine, psychology, and psychiatry, evidence gradually established that children's cognitive, emotional, and social capacities develop over time, and that childhood is a distinct phase of life requiring specific protection and support.
This understanding is reflected in the international legal framework for the protection of children, including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Convention defines a child as anyone under the age of 18. For the design of protection measures, however, treating all children under 18 as a single group can overlook important differences in what they are able to do, what they need, and what makes them vulnerable. After all, a 3-year-old and a 16-year-old face neither the same risks online nor have the same tools to deal with them. EU policy has started to reflect this. The Commission's guidelines under Article 28 of the Digital Services Act ask online platforms to design their services around minors' developmental, cognitive, and emotional needs, taking into account their age or stage of development and their evolving capacities. Developmental research shows that these capacities change considerably as children grow (Gogtay et al., 2004; Mills et al., 2016; Tamnes et al., 2017).
Therefore, the Special Panel argues for a developmental approach to child safety online. Risks do not depend on age alone but emerge from the interaction between children’s stage of development, their level of digital exposure, peer influence, and the amount of guidance and supervision available to them**. This developmental logic is also reflected in the EU KIDS Act proposal, which President von der Leyen described in the 2026 SOTEU as taking a "gradual and differentiated approach", with a tailored level of protection for each age group.
This matters because children’s relationship with the digital environment changes rapidly as they grow. Over time, their exposure to online environments increases in intensity, complexity, and personalisation, while direct parental supervision gradually declines. At the same time, skills such as self-regulation and critical thinking are still developing. This results in a mismatch: children enter increasingly complex digital environments before they have fully developed the capacities needed to navigate them. The Panel identifies early adolescence as a particularly sensitive period, when digital exposure and peer influence are high while psychological vulnerability also tends to peak.
Protection should therefore evolve alongside children’s capacities and growing autonomy. During early childhood, when dependence on caregivers is greatest, the focus should be on limiting screen exposure and encouraging direct interaction with caregivers. Between the ages of 3 and 12, increasing use of digital services requires structured supervision alongside the gradual development of digital and media literacy. During adolescence, traditional forms of supervision become less effective as young people gain independence. Here, protection should increasingly be combined with guidance, support for self-regulation, and the skills needed to navigate digital environments safely and critically. Furthermore, as parents and teachers lose some of their ability to supervise, risks are increasingly shaped by how digital services are designed rather than by individual behaviour alone. This is where the responsibility of providers becomes most visible.
The objective is not simply to reduce protection as children grow, but to change how protection is provided. The approach proposed by the Special Panel involves a gradual shift from protection centred around caregivers to one centred on children’s growing autonomy, while maintaining appropriate support.
Making digital environments safer by design
A central message of the report is that safety should be a feature of the service, not a burden placed on the people using it. Hence, a key recommendation is to strengthen and harmonise rules on the safety features built into digital services. In practice, this means integrating safeguards into the design of services rather than relying mainly on users to protect themselves once risks arise. The report highlights features such as infinite scrolling, autoplay, push notifications, and recommendation systems, which may push users towards excessive or compulsive use. It also calls for protective default settings to tackle dark patterns, unsolicited contact, and "rabbit holes" of harmful content. Since technology evolves quickly, these rules should be flexible enough to address new harmful design features as they emerge.
Closely linked to this is the Panel’s call to shift the burden of proof toward digital service providers. Rather than regulators, parents or children having to show that a service is harmful, providers should have to show that it is safe and age-appropriate before minors can use it. Until appropriate safety measures are in place, the report argues that specific access restrictions may be necessary. Where services offer both a "safe by default" version and features intended for adults, the latter should only become available following effective age assurance. The same principle was explicitly reflected in the 2026 SOTEU, where von der Leyen described the EU KIDS Act as “reversing the burden of proof” by placing greater responsibility on platforms to demonstrate that their services are safe. While the proposal does not establish a formal reversal of the burden of proof, it translates this principle into concrete compliance obligations for designated very large online platforms (VLOPs), which must submit detailed compliance plans, undergo independent audits, and address any shortcomings identified.
Age assurance therefore plays an important role in making both safety by design and age-appropriate access work in practice. The Special Panel report distinguishes between age verification and age estimation, and calls for systems that are accurate, proportionate, reliable, inclusive, and robust against circumvention. At the same time, these systems should respect users’ fundamental rights and meet high standards of privacy and data protection. The aim is to enable services to provide different levels of access and protection according to age without creating unnecessary risks to users’ privacy.
On access, the Panel recommends a harmonised EU-wide access restriction to social media+ for children under 13. Children below this age would only have limited access to age-appropriate services with parental authorisation and supervision, or in educational contexts. According to the report, a common EU approach would create a single compliance framework for providers, make enforcement easier, and ensure a similar level of protection for children regardless of where they live.
The EU KIDS Act proposal sets out a more specific legal framework. Providers of social networking and video-sharing services would not be allowed to let children under 15 create autonomously their own accounts where the service poses risks to minors, for instance through features that encourage continuous use. From age 13, guardians could set up accounts with limited features, with parental tools always active, pre-approved contacts, and a daily limit of one hour. Below age 13, access would only be possible exceptionally, through a guardian's own account on video-sharing services specifically designed for young children. Beyond access, safety-by-design requirements would apply to all minors, not only for video-sharing platforms and social media, but also for online games, AI companions, general conversational chatbots, and app stores. Notably, by setting age 15 as a single EU threshold for autonomous accounts, the proposal fixes, at the EU level, an age limit that the Panel had left to national discretion. However, these rules are not yet law, and the final text will depend on negotiations with the European Parliament and the Council.
The proposed EU KIDS Act and the BIK+ strategy can reinforce each other. Regulation can set requirements for safer and more age-appropriate digital services, supported by practical tools such as the EU age verification solution. The proposal also recognises that effective protection requires not only regulation but also awareness, education, and empowerment. It would require Member States to adopt national strategies giving minors and their guardians access to support channels and information, including on digital literacy. These strategies would have to build on the experience and expertise of national Safer Internet Centres and could be supported by EU funding.
Empowering children and adults around them
The digital environment is not only a source of risk, but also a space for learning, social connection, creativity, and participation. With solid digital skills, children and adolescents can use online spaces to connect with others, learn, express themselves, and take part in society. For this reason, the Special Panel stresses that protection must go hand in hand with measures that empower minors to use digital services safely and confidently.
However, children’s ability to navigate the digital environment safely does not depend on their skills alone. Their “supporting circles” – including parents, caregivers, teachers, and educators – also play an important role in guiding and supporting their online experiences. Keeping conversations open can make it easier for children to ask for help when, for instance, they come across harmful content.
The Panel’s report also recognises that children and adolescents may sometimes find online spaces more accessible than traditional sources of support. This may be especially true for vulnerable minors, such as those experiencing mental health difficulties or belonging to the LGBTIQ+ community. Yet the same spaces that offer connection and peer support can also expose already vulnerable children to unwanted contact and other risks. The Panel therefore stresses the importance of ensuring that children can access reliable information and appropriate support, both online and offline.
Digital and media literacy are central to this approach. The report recommends embedding digital education at all levels of education as a basic skill for children and adolescents, parents and caregivers, and teachers and educators. Children should learn not only how to use digital technologies, but also how to critically assess online information, recognise manipulation, understand how algorithms influence what they see, manage privacy and personal data, and identify risks across social media, messaging, and gaming platforms. In line with the developmental approach, these skills should be built progressively, starting with basic safety habits and moving toward a more complex understanding of digital footprints, consent, and platform risks. Digital well-being should also be part of this education, helping children develop healthy and balanced digital habits.
Furthermore, as digital technologies continue to evolve, these skills must evolve with them. In this respect, the Panel suggests making AI literacy an integral part of digital education. Children should understand what technologies, such as generative AI and chatbots, can and cannot do, and the risks they bring, while parents and educators need the knowledge to guide them. AI tools can support learning and access to information, but they can also create risks linked to misinformation, privacy, dependency, and the substitution of human interaction.
These recommendations build on existing EU initiatives. The 2021 EU Strategy on the Rights of the Child made the digital environment one of its thematic areas and called for an update of the 2012 Better Internet for Children strategy. The result was the Better Internet for Kids strategy (BIK+), adopted in May 2022 as the digital arm of the Rights of the Child strategy. BIK+ complements EU legislation, notably the Digital Services Act (DSA), through awareness-raising, capacity building, and support measures, providing resources for children and young people, parents and caregivers, and teachers and educators.
At the heart of BIK+ is the network of Safer Internet Centres (SICs), which combines coordination, prevention, education and direct support. Safer Internet Centres provide training and educational resources, promote digital and media literacy and responsible online behaviour, offer helplines for children and families facing online problems, and run hotlines where people can report illegal content. The Special Panel recommends ensuring sufficient public funding and common standards for Safer Internet Centres and comparable civil society organisations, while further developing peer counselling, helplines, hotlines, and other support services, including for vulnerable minors.
Empowerment therefore requires support not only for children, but also for the adults and services around them. The Panel calls for stronger guidance for parents and caregivers, and more appropriate training for teachers in digital and media literacy. Together, these measures can help children progressively develop the knowledge, resilience, and autonomy they need to benefit from digital technologies, knowing that support is there when things go wrong.
Children as participants, not only recipients of protection
Children and adolescents should not be considered merely as recipients of protection measures. Being directly affected by the policies and digital environments designed around them, they should be given meaningful opportunities to contribute to the decisions that shape their online lives.
In this respect, the Special Panel makes children’s rights and participation one of the six guiding principles of its approach. The report stresses that children should be able to participate safely, interact, and contribute to co-creating the digital environment.
More specifically, the Panel calls for children to be involved in the co-design of safety policies, training programmes, evaluations, and guidelines. However, participation should not become a symbolic exercise. For children’s involvement to be meaningful, they should receive clear information on the purpose of the process, understand how their contributions will be used, and receive feedback on the outcomes. In other words, children should be able to see a clear link between what they said and what was decided.
Yet not all children have the same opportunities to make their voices heard. The Panel calls for special efforts to include children from disadvantaged, marginalised, and vulnerable groups. Attention should be given to different social and geographical backgrounds. Their inclusion is particularly important since the risks and opportunities associated with the digital environment are not equally distributed among minors.
Existing EU initiatives already provide mechanisms through which this approach can be put into practice. The EU Children’s Participation Platform allows children under 18 to engage directly with policymakers through consultations, workshops, surveys, and other activities. Similarly, active participation is one of the three pillars of BIK+. The strategy itself was shaped by more than 750 children and young people, who shared their views through consultation sessions organised by Safer Internet Centres. The BIK+ strategy also requires a child-centred evaluation every two years.
What could the recommendations mean for BIK+?
With several of the Panel's central themes, including age-differentiated protection, safety by design, and age assurance, now on the legislative agenda, the question of what the report means for BIK+ has become more immediate. The recommendations offer several elements that could reinforce and further develop the approach already taken by BIK+.
First, the Panel’s developmental approach could help strengthen the age-sensitive dimension of BIK+. This could mean adapting information, educational resources, support, and opportunities for participation more systematically to children’s different stages of development.
Second, the Panel strongly emphasises the responsibility of digital service providers to create safer environments by design. Here, BIK+ plays a complementary role. These protections only work if children, parents, caregivers, and educators understand them and know how to use them. Awareness raising, digital and media literacy, helplines, and other forms of practical support can therefore help translate regulatory protections into tools that children and their supporting circles can use every day.
Third, the recommendations confirm that digital education must be a continuous process for adults as well as children. The Panel’s focus on AI literacy points to an area where BIK+ activities may need to continue evolving, ensuring that children and adults are equipped to understand both the opportunities and the risks associated with emerging technologies.
In this respect, Safer Internet Centres remain particularly relevant. Their combination of awareness raising, education, helplines, hotlines, and direct support places them at the intersection of prevention and assistance. Extending the reach of Safer Internet Centres, especially among vulnerable and disadvantaged children, could help ensure that protection and empowerment reach those who need them most.
Finally, the recommendations provide a basis for further strengthening the active participation pillar of BIK+. Existing BIK+ participation mechanisms could be used more systematically to involve children in identifying emerging concerns, shaping responses, and assessing whether measures are having the intended effects, with appropriate safeguards throughout the process.
In conclusion, the Special Panel’s recommendations point towards an approach in which regulation, education, support, and participation reinforce one another. Age restrictions may be the most visible part of the debate, but they are only one piece of a much larger picture. For BIK+, the recommendations do not necessarily imply a change of direction. Rather, they offer a useful perspective for further development of existing priorities: making protection more responsive to children’s age and circumstances, supporting the adults around them, strengthening the role of Safer Internet Centres, and ensuring that children themselves have a meaningful role in shaping the digital environment. In this way, BIK+ can continue to link European policy objectives with the practical support that children, families, and educators need in their everyday digital lives.
Interested in more?
Explore other relevant research in the Research and reports directory of the BIK Knowledge hub. Together with the BIK Policy monitor, it is updated annually and collates research that informs the implementation of the BIK+ strategy across the EU Member States, Iceland, and Norway.
* The report uses the term “social media+” broadly to refer to social media and other digital services that may expose minors to age-inappropriate or risky content, features, or interactions. This includes risks linked not only to harmful content, but also to service design, such as addictive or manipulative features and recommendation systems.
** These risks may also be shaped by factors such as gender, sexuality, socio-economic background, ethnic origin, migration background, and special educational needs.
The proposed EU KIDS Act builds on several of the themes developed by the Special Panel on child safety online. The Panel’s wider recommendations provide important context for understanding the policy approach behind the proposal and what it could mean for BIK+.
Beyond age restrictions
Can children be protected online simply by keeping them away from social media? In recent months, this question has moved to the centre of the European debate. In this context, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tasked two Special Advisers, Prof. Dr. Jörg M. Fegert and Dr. Maria Melchior, with co-chairing a Special Panel on child safety online between March and June 2026. The Panel brought together academics, practitioners, young people, and parent representatives, looking in turn at the scientific evidence, existing EU and national rules, and possible recommendations to better protect and empower children online.
The resulting report, presented in July 2026, gives a clear answer to the opening question. Age restrictions matter, but on their own they are not enough. The report takes a broader approach to protecting and empowering children across what it calls the "social media+" environment*. Its overall aim is to support a digital environment in which children can grow up safely while gaining age-appropriate autonomy.
Since then, the debate has moved on. In her State of the Union address (SOTEU) on 16 September 2026, President von der Leyen announced an EU KIDS Act, which the Commission proposed the following day. The proposed Regulation would introduce EU-wide rules on minors' access to social networking and video-sharing services, as well as safety-by-design requirements for a wider range of services, including online games, AI chatbots, and AI companions. The proposal explicitly takes the Panel's report as its starting point, so its recommendations are no longer only expert advice.
Certainly, the report does not dismiss age restrictions, but it makes clear that responsibility for child safety should not rest primarily with children, parents, or caregivers. Digital service providers retain primary responsibility for the safety of their services, and it is up to them, not regulators or families, to prove that those services are safe for minors.
This reflects a broader understanding of child safety online as a shared responsibility. Digital service providers are expected to create safer, age-appropriate environments; the EU and national authorities have a role in regulation, enforcement, evaluation, and research; parents, caregivers, and professionals provide guidance and support; and children should gradually develop the skills to navigate digital environments safely and to take part in shaping them.
The report organises this broader approach around six guiding principles: a developmental approach; equality and diversity; protection of minors; accountability of digital service providers; empowerment and media education; and children’s rights and participation. Taken together, these principles point to three shifts in the approach to child safety online. First, protection should reflect children’s different ages, developmental stages, and individual circumstances. Second, greater responsibility should be placed on providers to create safer digital environments by design. Third, protection should be combined with empowerment, education, and opportunities for children to participate safely and meaningfully in the digital world.
This wider perspective is particularly relevant to the Better Internet for Kids strategy (BIK+), which similarly combines protection with digital empowerment and active participation. In fact, the report itself points to Better Internet for Kids (BIK) and the network of Safer Internet Centres as initiatives that can strengthen children's critical thinking and resilience to disinformation, and it calls for their continued public funding. The following sections explore how some of the Special Panel's recommendations could reinforce the different dimensions of BIK+ in practice.
Different ages, different needs
Understandings of childhood have varied considerably across history. In earlier societies, where child labour was often an economic necessity, children were largely treated as "small adults", and their specific needs were not recognised. With the rise of modern disciplines such as developmental medicine, psychology, and psychiatry, evidence gradually established that children's cognitive, emotional, and social capacities develop over time, and that childhood is a distinct phase of life requiring specific protection and support.
This understanding is reflected in the international legal framework for the protection of children, including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Convention defines a child as anyone under the age of 18. For the design of protection measures, however, treating all children under 18 as a single group can overlook important differences in what they are able to do, what they need, and what makes them vulnerable. After all, a 3-year-old and a 16-year-old face neither the same risks online nor have the same tools to deal with them. EU policy has started to reflect this. The Commission's guidelines under Article 28 of the Digital Services Act ask online platforms to design their services around minors' developmental, cognitive, and emotional needs, taking into account their age or stage of development and their evolving capacities. Developmental research shows that these capacities change considerably as children grow (Gogtay et al., 2004; Mills et al., 2016; Tamnes et al., 2017).
Therefore, the Special Panel argues for a developmental approach to child safety online. Risks do not depend on age alone but emerge from the interaction between children’s stage of development, their level of digital exposure, peer influence, and the amount of guidance and supervision available to them**. This developmental logic is also reflected in the EU KIDS Act proposal, which President von der Leyen described in the 2026 SOTEU as taking a "gradual and differentiated approach", with a tailored level of protection for each age group.
This matters because children’s relationship with the digital environment changes rapidly as they grow. Over time, their exposure to online environments increases in intensity, complexity, and personalisation, while direct parental supervision gradually declines. At the same time, skills such as self-regulation and critical thinking are still developing. This results in a mismatch: children enter increasingly complex digital environments before they have fully developed the capacities needed to navigate them. The Panel identifies early adolescence as a particularly sensitive period, when digital exposure and peer influence are high while psychological vulnerability also tends to peak.
Protection should therefore evolve alongside children’s capacities and growing autonomy. During early childhood, when dependence on caregivers is greatest, the focus should be on limiting screen exposure and encouraging direct interaction with caregivers. Between the ages of 3 and 12, increasing use of digital services requires structured supervision alongside the gradual development of digital and media literacy. During adolescence, traditional forms of supervision become less effective as young people gain independence. Here, protection should increasingly be combined with guidance, support for self-regulation, and the skills needed to navigate digital environments safely and critically. Furthermore, as parents and teachers lose some of their ability to supervise, risks are increasingly shaped by how digital services are designed rather than by individual behaviour alone. This is where the responsibility of providers becomes most visible.
The objective is not simply to reduce protection as children grow, but to change how protection is provided. The approach proposed by the Special Panel involves a gradual shift from protection centred around caregivers to one centred on children’s growing autonomy, while maintaining appropriate support.
Making digital environments safer by design
A central message of the report is that safety should be a feature of the service, not a burden placed on the people using it. Hence, a key recommendation is to strengthen and harmonise rules on the safety features built into digital services. In practice, this means integrating safeguards into the design of services rather than relying mainly on users to protect themselves once risks arise. The report highlights features such as infinite scrolling, autoplay, push notifications, and recommendation systems, which may push users towards excessive or compulsive use. It also calls for protective default settings to tackle dark patterns, unsolicited contact, and "rabbit holes" of harmful content. Since technology evolves quickly, these rules should be flexible enough to address new harmful design features as they emerge.
Closely linked to this is the Panel’s call to shift the burden of proof toward digital service providers. Rather than regulators, parents or children having to show that a service is harmful, providers should have to show that it is safe and age-appropriate before minors can use it. Until appropriate safety measures are in place, the report argues that specific access restrictions may be necessary. Where services offer both a "safe by default" version and features intended for adults, the latter should only become available following effective age assurance. The same principle was explicitly reflected in the 2026 SOTEU, where von der Leyen described the EU KIDS Act as “reversing the burden of proof” by placing greater responsibility on platforms to demonstrate that their services are safe. While the proposal does not establish a formal reversal of the burden of proof, it translates this principle into concrete compliance obligations for designated very large online platforms (VLOPs), which must submit detailed compliance plans, undergo independent audits, and address any shortcomings identified.
Age assurance therefore plays an important role in making both safety by design and age-appropriate access work in practice. The Special Panel report distinguishes between age verification and age estimation, and calls for systems that are accurate, proportionate, reliable, inclusive, and robust against circumvention. At the same time, these systems should respect users’ fundamental rights and meet high standards of privacy and data protection. The aim is to enable services to provide different levels of access and protection according to age without creating unnecessary risks to users’ privacy.
On access, the Panel recommends a harmonised EU-wide access restriction to social media+ for children under 13. Children below this age would only have limited access to age-appropriate services with parental authorisation and supervision, or in educational contexts. According to the report, a common EU approach would create a single compliance framework for providers, make enforcement easier, and ensure a similar level of protection for children regardless of where they live.
The EU KIDS Act proposal sets out a more specific legal framework. Providers of social networking and video-sharing services would not be allowed to let children under 15 create autonomously their own accounts where the service poses risks to minors, for instance through features that encourage continuous use. From age 13, guardians could set up accounts with limited features, with parental tools always active, pre-approved contacts, and a daily limit of one hour. Below age 13, access would only be possible exceptionally, through a guardian's own account on video-sharing services specifically designed for young children. Beyond access, safety-by-design requirements would apply to all minors, not only for video-sharing platforms and social media, but also for online games, AI companions, general conversational chatbots, and app stores. Notably, by setting age 15 as a single EU threshold for autonomous accounts, the proposal fixes, at the EU level, an age limit that the Panel had left to national discretion. However, these rules are not yet law, and the final text will depend on negotiations with the European Parliament and the Council.
The proposed EU KIDS Act and the BIK+ strategy can reinforce each other. Regulation can set requirements for safer and more age-appropriate digital services, supported by practical tools such as the EU age verification solution. The proposal also recognises that effective protection requires not only regulation but also awareness, education, and empowerment. It would require Member States to adopt national strategies giving minors and their guardians access to support channels and information, including on digital literacy. These strategies would have to build on the experience and expertise of national Safer Internet Centres and could be supported by EU funding.
Empowering children and adults around them
The digital environment is not only a source of risk, but also a space for learning, social connection, creativity, and participation. With solid digital skills, children and adolescents can use online spaces to connect with others, learn, express themselves, and take part in society. For this reason, the Special Panel stresses that protection must go hand in hand with measures that empower minors to use digital services safely and confidently.
However, children’s ability to navigate the digital environment safely does not depend on their skills alone. Their “supporting circles” – including parents, caregivers, teachers, and educators – also play an important role in guiding and supporting their online experiences. Keeping conversations open can make it easier for children to ask for help when, for instance, they come across harmful content.
The Panel’s report also recognises that children and adolescents may sometimes find online spaces more accessible than traditional sources of support. This may be especially true for vulnerable minors, such as those experiencing mental health difficulties or belonging to the LGBTIQ+ community. Yet the same spaces that offer connection and peer support can also expose already vulnerable children to unwanted contact and other risks. The Panel therefore stresses the importance of ensuring that children can access reliable information and appropriate support, both online and offline.
Digital and media literacy are central to this approach. The report recommends embedding digital education at all levels of education as a basic skill for children and adolescents, parents and caregivers, and teachers and educators. Children should learn not only how to use digital technologies, but also how to critically assess online information, recognise manipulation, understand how algorithms influence what they see, manage privacy and personal data, and identify risks across social media, messaging, and gaming platforms. In line with the developmental approach, these skills should be built progressively, starting with basic safety habits and moving toward a more complex understanding of digital footprints, consent, and platform risks. Digital well-being should also be part of this education, helping children develop healthy and balanced digital habits.
Furthermore, as digital technologies continue to evolve, these skills must evolve with them. In this respect, the Panel suggests making AI literacy an integral part of digital education. Children should understand what technologies, such as generative AI and chatbots, can and cannot do, and the risks they bring, while parents and educators need the knowledge to guide them. AI tools can support learning and access to information, but they can also create risks linked to misinformation, privacy, dependency, and the substitution of human interaction.
These recommendations build on existing EU initiatives. The 2021 EU Strategy on the Rights of the Child made the digital environment one of its thematic areas and called for an update of the 2012 Better Internet for Children strategy. The result was the Better Internet for Kids strategy (BIK+), adopted in May 2022 as the digital arm of the Rights of the Child strategy. BIK+ complements EU legislation, notably the Digital Services Act (DSA), through awareness-raising, capacity building, and support measures, providing resources for children and young people, parents and caregivers, and teachers and educators.
At the heart of BIK+ is the network of Safer Internet Centres (SICs), which combines coordination, prevention, education and direct support. Safer Internet Centres provide training and educational resources, promote digital and media literacy and responsible online behaviour, offer helplines for children and families facing online problems, and run hotlines where people can report illegal content. The Special Panel recommends ensuring sufficient public funding and common standards for Safer Internet Centres and comparable civil society organisations, while further developing peer counselling, helplines, hotlines, and other support services, including for vulnerable minors.
Empowerment therefore requires support not only for children, but also for the adults and services around them. The Panel calls for stronger guidance for parents and caregivers, and more appropriate training for teachers in digital and media literacy. Together, these measures can help children progressively develop the knowledge, resilience, and autonomy they need to benefit from digital technologies, knowing that support is there when things go wrong.
Children as participants, not only recipients of protection
Children and adolescents should not be considered merely as recipients of protection measures. Being directly affected by the policies and digital environments designed around them, they should be given meaningful opportunities to contribute to the decisions that shape their online lives.
In this respect, the Special Panel makes children’s rights and participation one of the six guiding principles of its approach. The report stresses that children should be able to participate safely, interact, and contribute to co-creating the digital environment.
More specifically, the Panel calls for children to be involved in the co-design of safety policies, training programmes, evaluations, and guidelines. However, participation should not become a symbolic exercise. For children’s involvement to be meaningful, they should receive clear information on the purpose of the process, understand how their contributions will be used, and receive feedback on the outcomes. In other words, children should be able to see a clear link between what they said and what was decided.
Yet not all children have the same opportunities to make their voices heard. The Panel calls for special efforts to include children from disadvantaged, marginalised, and vulnerable groups. Attention should be given to different social and geographical backgrounds. Their inclusion is particularly important since the risks and opportunities associated with the digital environment are not equally distributed among minors.
Existing EU initiatives already provide mechanisms through which this approach can be put into practice. The EU Children’s Participation Platform allows children under 18 to engage directly with policymakers through consultations, workshops, surveys, and other activities. Similarly, active participation is one of the three pillars of BIK+. The strategy itself was shaped by more than 750 children and young people, who shared their views through consultation sessions organised by Safer Internet Centres. The BIK+ strategy also requires a child-centred evaluation every two years.
What could the recommendations mean for BIK+?
With several of the Panel's central themes, including age-differentiated protection, safety by design, and age assurance, now on the legislative agenda, the question of what the report means for BIK+ has become more immediate. The recommendations offer several elements that could reinforce and further develop the approach already taken by BIK+.
First, the Panel’s developmental approach could help strengthen the age-sensitive dimension of BIK+. This could mean adapting information, educational resources, support, and opportunities for participation more systematically to children’s different stages of development.
Second, the Panel strongly emphasises the responsibility of digital service providers to create safer environments by design. Here, BIK+ plays a complementary role. These protections only work if children, parents, caregivers, and educators understand them and know how to use them. Awareness raising, digital and media literacy, helplines, and other forms of practical support can therefore help translate regulatory protections into tools that children and their supporting circles can use every day.
Third, the recommendations confirm that digital education must be a continuous process for adults as well as children. The Panel’s focus on AI literacy points to an area where BIK+ activities may need to continue evolving, ensuring that children and adults are equipped to understand both the opportunities and the risks associated with emerging technologies.
In this respect, Safer Internet Centres remain particularly relevant. Their combination of awareness raising, education, helplines, hotlines, and direct support places them at the intersection of prevention and assistance. Extending the reach of Safer Internet Centres, especially among vulnerable and disadvantaged children, could help ensure that protection and empowerment reach those who need them most.
Finally, the recommendations provide a basis for further strengthening the active participation pillar of BIK+. Existing BIK+ participation mechanisms could be used more systematically to involve children in identifying emerging concerns, shaping responses, and assessing whether measures are having the intended effects, with appropriate safeguards throughout the process.
In conclusion, the Special Panel’s recommendations point towards an approach in which regulation, education, support, and participation reinforce one another. Age restrictions may be the most visible part of the debate, but they are only one piece of a much larger picture. For BIK+, the recommendations do not necessarily imply a change of direction. Rather, they offer a useful perspective for further development of existing priorities: making protection more responsive to children’s age and circumstances, supporting the adults around them, strengthening the role of Safer Internet Centres, and ensuring that children themselves have a meaningful role in shaping the digital environment. In this way, BIK+ can continue to link European policy objectives with the practical support that children, families, and educators need in their everyday digital lives.
Interested in more?
Explore other relevant research in the Research and reports directory of the BIK Knowledge hub. Together with the BIK Policy monitor, it is updated annually and collates research that informs the implementation of the BIK+ strategy across the EU Member States, Iceland, and Norway.
* The report uses the term “social media+” broadly to refer to social media and other digital services that may expose minors to age-inappropriate or risky content, features, or interactions. This includes risks linked not only to harmful content, but also to service design, such as addictive or manipulative features and recommendation systems.
** These risks may also be shaped by factors such as gender, sexuality, socio-economic background, ethnic origin, migration background, and special educational needs.
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