The European Union wants to ban chatbots and online games for kids under 15, not just social media
The European Union has proposed the EU Kids Act, which would restrict children under 15 from accessing social media, chatbots, and online games. The legislation establishes age-based access tiers and mandates strict parental controls for younger users while requiring age verification for account creation. Companies violating these regulations face fines of up to 6% of their global annual revenue, a measure that extends to app stores and AI companion services.
- ▪The proposed EU Kids Act bans independent access to social media, video-sharing platforms, and online games for children under 15.
- ▪Parents may create restricted accounts for 13- and 14-year-olds, while children aged 3 to 12 are limited to child-friendly services fully controlled by parents.
- ▪Violations of the new rules could result in fines reaching 6% of an organization's annual global sales.
- ▪The regulation requires platforms to implement age checks and avoid addictive design features such as endless scrolling and autoplay.
- ▪The EU's age-checking app is ready for deployment, with member states urged to make it available by the end of the year.
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| Original publisher | TechSpot |
| Canonical URL | https://www.techspot.com/news/113851-eu-plans-under-15-restrictions-social-media-ai.html |
| Publication time | Tue, 15 Sep 2026 11:32 -0500 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-15T16:36:52.527Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-15T16:36:52.527Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
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| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | me-m4PT_VxgE · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
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| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
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AI The Web kids european union The European Union wants to ban chatbots and online games for kids under 15, not just social media Fines could reach 6% of global revenue, with app stores and AI companions also in scope By Rob Thubron September 15, 2026, 11:32 Add TechSpot Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. In brief: The EU is continuing its crackdown on allowing children access to social media. A proposed new law wouldn't just target these platforms; it would also restrict children under the age of 15 from accessing video-sharing platforms, chatbots, and online games, with exceptions for supervised use. Reuters reports that the EU Kids Act is due to be presented on Thursday.
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