On 14 July 2025, the EU Commission released guidelines on the protection of minors online under the Digital Services Act.
Key recommendations include:
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Setting minors’ accounts to private by default
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Modifying the platforms’ recommender systems
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Empowering children to be able to block and mute any user
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Prohibiting accounts from downloading or taking screenshots of content posted by minors
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Disabling by default features that contribute to excessive use
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Ensuring that children’s lack of commercial literacy is not exploited
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Introducing measures to improve moderation and reporting tools
The guidelines also recommend the use of effective age assurance methods. In relation to this, the EU Commission has released an age verification blueprint to “help online platforms implement a user-friendly and privacy-preserving age verification method”.
The blueprint is app based. Users will be able to download it, choose the method of verification and use it to access restricted adult content. Only the confirmation that a user is over a certain age will be saved in the app and this is the only information that will be shared an age restricted website.
More information on the guidelines can be found here and more information on the blueprint can be found here.
