The guidelines outline a non-exhaustive list of measures that all platforms, with the exception of micro and small enterprises, can implement to protect minors, using a default approach that is guided by privacy by design.
The guidelines adopt the same risk-based approach that underpins the DSA, recognising that different platforms pose varying levels of risks to minors. This ensures that platforms can tailor their measures to their specific services, avoiding undue restrictions on children’s rights to participation, information, and freedom of expression.
For example, platforms should:
- Implement age assurance measures that reduce the risks of children being exposed to pornography or other age-inappropriate content.
- Set children’s accounts as private by default, thus reducing the risk of unsolicited contact by strangers.
- Adjust their recommender systems and prioritise explicit signals by users on whether they like or not the content they see, reducing the risk of children ending up in rabbit holes of harmful content.
- Enable children to block and mute any user and ensure they cannot be added to groups without their explicit agreement, which may contribute to reducing the risk of cyberbullying.
The development of these guidelines is the result of extensive research, consultations and workshops with various stakeholders, including children via Better Internet for Kids (BIK+), online platform providers and experts from civil society and academia. The Commission has also collaborated with the Digital Services Coordinators through the European Board for Digital Services and its working group on the protection of minors.
The draft guidelines are open for final public feedback until 15 June 2025. The Commission is seeking contributions of all stakeholders, including children, parents and guardians, national authorities, online platform providers, and experts. The publication of the guidelines is expected by the summer of 2025.
In light of the success of the workshop on 4 June 2025 and the good discussions the Commission had with a wide variety of stakeholders in this context, the Commission services have decided to extend the deadline for responses to this consultation to 15 June (COB), in order to allow all stakeholders to incorporate the insights generated during the event into their feedback on the Commission’s proposal for Guidelines under Article 28 of the DSA.
In parallel, the Commission is working on an age-verification app, intended to provide an interim solution until the EU Digital Identity Wallet becomes available by the end of 2026. This app, based on the same technology as the EU Wallet, will enable online service providers to verify if users are 18 years or older without compromising their privacy, further enhancing the protection of minors online. The aim of the project is to develop an EU harmonised privacy-preserving age verification solution, including a white-label open-source app by summer 2025. The first version of the technical specifications and the beta version are already available on GitHub.
The Commission is also working on a proposal for a Digital Fairness Act, which may further address digital issues related to minors which are not covered by the DSA.