European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen used her annual State of the European Union address in Strasbourg on Wednesday to propose banning children under 13 from accessing social media, online games and AI chatbots, while also signaling Europe's readiness to help slow the pace of frontier AI development.
Under the proposal, teenagers aged 13 to 15 would not be barred outright but would receive guardian-supervised “mini accounts” designed to give them phased access to online platforms. Von der Leyen framed the measure as a direct challenge to Big Tech, saying: “We do not have to accept addictive features... children being drawn into ever more extreme content... girls have their photos used for AI-generated sexualized images.” The 27 EU member states will now vote on the plan.
The European Commission president also said she plans to invite leading frontier AI labs to Brussels to discuss how regulators can support efforts to “pace the frontier”, citing warnings from executives that self-improving AI models are becoming harder to control. She described the EU's AI Act as a crucial tool, giving regulators the power to halt unsafe models and allowing independent evaluators to test advanced systems.
Von der Leyen's comments follow a growing split within the AI industry. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for slowing the push toward more capable models, with support from xAI's Elon Musk and OpenAI's Sam Altman. By contrast, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg pushed back, with Zuckerberg arguing that liability already gives AI developers enough incentive to prevent harmful systems from reaching the public.
The child-protection proposal adds to a broader global debate. Meta Platforms recently agreed to pay up to $18 billion and strengthen child-safety measures in a settlement with nearly every US state. Australia and New Zealand have already introduced restrictions, while France's top court struck down a proposed under-15 ban last month. European Parliament group leader Manfred Weber went further after von der Leyen's speech, proposing that EU citizens be allowed to switch off social media algorithms entirely, adding: “Elon Musk will not like it, but probably that is a reason for doing it.”
The measures could create new compliance burdens for Meta, Alphabet's Google, ByteDance's TikTok, OpenAI and Character.AI, and may stoke fresh trade tensions with Washington given President Donald Trump's criticism of EU tech rules.
