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A European Union Special Panel report<\/a> released on Tuesday called for EU-wide age restrictions on social media, banning children under 13 from accessing the platforms. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that restrictions were needed. After decades of making the real world safer for children and it\u2019s time to do the same in the digital world, she said. The panel, which met three times starting in March, wrote that its main goal was to support parents and educators to help children understand the dangers of social media and be equipped to deal with those challenges.\u00a0<\/p>\n The report<\/a> cited concerns about how technology has rapidly and greatly changed how children grow up and interact with the world. The panel argued that social media companies must bear the brunt of the responsibilities. Until the companies demonstrate that their services are safe by design, the companies should restrict access to children in the EU under 13, the report said. Though some EU countries previously proposed setting online age limits, advocates argued that blanket EU restrictions will best protect kids across the continent. Another recent EU report<\/a> released found that 92% of Europeans think that strengthening digital protections should be one of the EU\u2019s priorities.<\/p>\n The time to act is now, the EU Commission stated<\/a> on Tuesday. Technology\u2019s positive benefits must not come at the expense of children\u2019s health, happiness, or safety, von der Leyen said.\u00a0<\/p>\n How have tech companies reacted? Google and Meta didn\u2019t seem to address the report on Tuesday morning. In April, a coalition of the tech giants including Snapchat and Microsoft criticized<\/a> the EU for allowing the lapse of a law that had permitted the companies to scan for child sexual exploitation material on their platforms. The four firms said they would continue to scan for the material anyway, though. The Guardian reported<\/a> that some EU lawmakers hesitated to renew the law over privacy concerns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Loading the Audio Player… A European Union Special Panel report released on Tuesday called for EU-wide age restrictions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94371,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7622,1474,39,15,40,3790,5056,3486,11894,3035],"class_list":["post-94370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-children","tag-commission","tag-eu","tag-european","tag-european-union","tag-media","tag-online","tag-safety","tag-social","tag-union"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}