The European Commission accused the North American Meta on Wednesday of violating the European Union’s Digital Services Law by failing to prevent children under 13 from accessing Facebook and Instagram.
In a statement, the European Commission reported that it forced both social networks to “strengthen their measures to prevent, detect and delete the accounts of children under 13 years of age”. If they fail to do so, they could face a fine of up to 6% of its annual turnover.
According to , despite Meta’s terms and conditions establishing that children under 13 cannot create an account on social media, the measures that the platform implements to validate the age of its users “do not appear to be effective“.
Users may lie about their age when creating an account, claiming to be at least 13 years old, without any effective controls to verify the accuracy of the date of birth.
The European Commission also stated that Meta’s tool to alert about the presence of minors on its social networks “It is difficult to use and ineffective“, since it is necessary to click until seven times to access the complaint form.
The analysis carried out by Meta on the risk that its social networks represent is “incomplete and arbitrary” and contradicts “a large amount of evidence” in the EU that indicates that between 10% e 12% of children under 13 access Facebook and Instagram.
The Commission’s conclusion comes amid debate over the need to establish a minimum age in the EU for accessing social media and at a time when several countries have already approved legislation in this regard.
A Francea Italya Denmark ea Greece prohibited access to children under 15 years of age and Spainto children under 16 years of age.
In this context, the Community Executive assured this same month that the mobile application it developed to verify the age of users, fully guaranteeing their privacy, is already technically ready to be used.
The application, however, is not mandatory, but rather a tool that Brussels makes available to platforms to comply with the digital services law, which obliges them to protect minors.
Facebook and Instagram now have the possibility to analyze the European Commission’s findings and respond in writing. They can also implement measures to try to resolve the situations described.
These preliminary findings are part of a formal investigation opened by the European Commission into Facebook and Instagram in May 2024for being “concerned” about alleged violations of the rules on the protection of minors on both platforms.
