Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has said it supports proposals for a common digital majority age across EU member states.
France, Spain and Greece recently proposed the idea of a “digital majority” or the age below which it would be forbidden for children to connect to social media platforms.
Under the plans, there would be an EU-wide age of digital adulthood, below which minors would need parental consent to log onto social media.
The countries are also proposing the integration of age verification and parental control systems for devices connected to the internet.
Meta said it would support proposals whereby parents need to approve their younger teens’ access to digital services.
“We believe this can be an effective solution to the industry-wide challenge of ensuring teens have safe, age-appropriate experiences online,” Meta said in a newsroom post.
The company added that any new provisions should apply broadly across the digital services teens use – not just to social media platforms, but also gaming, streaming, messaging, and browsing.
Meta has also reiterated its call for age verification mechanisms at the app store or operating system level.
“I think it makes much more sense that this is done at the ecosystem, app store, operating system level,” said Global Director of Public Policy at Instagram Tara Hopkins.
“A signal can then be shared across multiple apps, and the decision gets made at that app store level as to whether or not you can download the app,” Ms Hopkins said.
Meta said its support for an EU-wide digital majority age is not an endorsement of government mandated social media bans, which the company claimed, “take away parental authority and focus narrowly on one type of online service”.
In May, Tánaiste Simon Harris said serious consideration should be given to banning under-16s from using social media, similar to a law passed last year in Australia.
Video sharing platforms based in Ireland will face new regulatory obligations to verify users’ ages before showing adult content from 21 July under Coimisiún na Meán’s online safety code.
The Commission said it will not mandate any specific technology, but that the age verification systems must be robust and privacy-respecting and must not hold data for longer than is necessary.
