Special panel on child safety online report

In March 2026, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen asked two Special Advisers - Prof. Dr. Jörg M. Fegert and Dr. Maria Melchior - to co-chair a Special Panel on child safety online and potential age restrictions for social media. Their report, published in September 2026, sets out the conclusions of that process and a series of recommendations for making the online world safer for minors.

The Panel met three times between March and June 2026, bringing together academics, practitioners, youth and parent representatives and specialists from across Europe. The report is an independent assessment by the Co-Chairs and does not represent the official position of the European Commission.

Digital literacy as a basic skill

Alongside its regulatory recommendations, the report makes a direct case for embedding digital education and literacy at all levels of education, treating it as a key basic skill for minors, parents and teachers alike, with digital well-being integrated into digital education for all.

The report sets out what this education should cover:

• critical evaluation of online information and sources, including the ability to recognise manipulation techniques such as disinformation, deepfakes and targeted advertising;
• understanding how digital content is created and shared, and how algorithms shape what users see - an understanding the report argues is needed by minors, parents and teachers alike;
• structured online safety skills: protecting personal data, managing privacy settings, maintaining secure digital identities, and identifying risks in social media, messaging and gaming environments;
• healthy screen use, addressed through guidance on balance, attention management and recognising harmful patterns of use.

The report stresses that these skills should be built progressively, starting from basic safety habits and moving towards a more complex understanding of digital footprints, consent and platform risks.

It also calls for sustained public funding and common standards for the Safer Internet Centres and comparable civil society organisations, whose awareness-raising, training and support work underpins much of this provision across Member States.

A developmental approach

The report's central argument is that protection measures should follow children's developmental stages rather than apply uniformly. It proposes three broad bands: avoiding screen exposure for children aged 0 to 2; supervised, time-limited and age-appropriate use between 3 and 12, with schools providing facilities for supervised educational use supporting digital and media literacy; and evolving autonomous use from 13 to 18, on services that are safe by default.

The report uses the term "social media+" to cover social media, app stores, video-sharing platforms, video games and AI systems including AI companions - services that may expose minors to age-inappropriate content or to features such as infinite scroll, autoplay, recommender systems and persistent notifications.

The protection recommendations

The report's best-known recommendation is a harmonised EU-wide access restriction to social media and other digital services for children under 13, with access below that age only through parental consent or in educational contexts. It argues that the burden of proof should sit with providers: until services demonstrate that they are safe by design, access for younger children should be restricted.

This is paired with a call for proportionate age-assurance systems that uphold privacy and data protection standards, with technical approaches such as Zero Knowledge Proof so that neither the platform nor the age verification provider can identify or track the user.

Who it is for

Policymakers, educators and teacher trainers, digital literacy programme designers, researchers, child protection practitioners, and organisations working on online safety education.

Access

The report is available in English and can be downloaded free of charge from the European Commission's Special Panel page. It is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence.