“Ensuring our youngsters and younger individuals are protected on-line is of paramount significance to this Fee,” stated EU tech coverage chief Henna Virkkunen. “The rules on the safety of minors for on-line platforms, mixed with the brand new age verification blueprint, are an enormous step ahead on this regard. Platforms don’t have any excuse to be persevering with practices that put kids in danger.”
The age verification app is designed to permit customers to show they’re over 18 when accessing restricted grownup content material on-line, serving to the EU to crack down on platforms which are failing to fulfill obligations underneath legal guidelines just like the DSA, and enabling firms to undertake the bloc’s verification toolbox as a substitute of creating their very own. The EU Fee says that app customers will retain full management over their private data, resembling their actual age or id, and that the net content material they view will stay personal.
The verification app prototype will likely be “examined and additional personalized in collaboration with Member States, on-line platforms and end-users,” in line with the EU Fee, with Denmark, Greece, Spain, France, and Italy aiming to launch nationwide age verification apps. It’s positioned as a short lived resolution that will likely be outdated by the EU Digital Identity Wallet that’s anticipated to launch in 2026, which goals to offer a method for “European residents, residents and companies to show who they’re when accessing digital companies” and a spot to “safely retailer, share and signal vital digital paperwork.”
Whereas the bloc’s DSA rulebook doesn’t impose particular age verification necessities, web sites and on-line platforms are obligated to guard the “well being, bodily, psychological, and ethical improvement” of minors who use their companies, and supply them with the “highest degree of privateness, security, and safety.” The brand new steering urges on-line platforms to handle considerations round exposing kids to dangerous content material, cyberbullying, undesirable interactions with strangers, and addictive design options.
In Could, the EU launched investigations into 4 giant grownup content material web sites — Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX, and XVideos — over considerations that they have been failing to have acceptable age verification instruments in place to forestall kids from accessing pornographic content material. The Fee stated on the time that it was open to accepting commitments that might treatment these considerations, which can embrace the implementation of the EU age verification app.