European youth between the ages of 13 and 18 spend an average of 4.5 hours in front of the screen during school days and 6.1 hours at the weekend, shows the EU opinion poll Eurobarometer. And it is Swedish youth who have their noses in the screen the most: more than seven hours during the weekend.
The fact that children and young people choose phones and computer games instead of playing outdoors, meeting physically, reading books and even being bored from time to time worries both parents and politicians.
- There is robust evidence for the damage that social media causes to a developing brain. Parents cannot fight the algorithms alone, said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday, when she presented the bill.
The EU's Children's Act is far-reaching and contains specific rules for different ages:
● Children under the age of 13 must not have their own access to social media and video platforms such as Youtube and Tiktok.
● Between the ages of 13 and 15, children should only be able to have "mini-accounts" linked to their parents' social media, which may be used for a maximum of one hour a day.
● Young people between 15 and 18 get their own access to the platforms, without time limits and parental controls.
The EU also requires tech companies to adapt their services for all young people. This includes, among other things, prohibitions on addictive features such as "infinite scrolling", and requirements that the algorithms that select which content is displayed be designed in such a way as to avoid "rabbit holes", where boys and girls can sometimes be served more and more violence, physical violence or self-harm content.
Accounts must be set up to prevent unknown users from contacting minors.
The bill must now be processed by the EU Parliament and the governments of the EU countries, before it can be approved and come into effect in Sweden and the rest of the EU.
The reactions from Swedish EU parliamentarians are generally positive, but among others the Moderates, the Green Party and the Center Party raise questions about integrity.
According to the bill, the IT companies themselves must check the age of the users. This can be done with the app designed by the EU or with national apps, such as Swedish Bank-id.
The EU app works so that users scan their ID card once. The app then acts as an intermediary between the user and the companies. When a 16-year-old wants to create a YouTube account, for example, YouTube sends a question to the EU app whether the user is over 13, 15 or 18 years old, and the app just answers yes or no without revealing any other personal data.
This means two problems: In order to check the age of young people, all users must register their personal data somewhere. Second, that information may be subject to a data breach.
- We have already seen how easy it is for hackers to get into systems. It should be a warning signal to anyone who wants to accumulate massive amounts of data in Brussels, says Charlie Weimers (SD).
SD also dislikes that it is the EU central, and not the EU countries, that act.
Most other Swedish politicians see it the other way around: Only the EU with its 450 million consumers has enough muscle to force the IT giants to make their algorithms less addictive for children.
- It doesn't work for individual countries to try to oppose each other. The social media platforms may threaten to leave the EU, but in the end it is far too interesting a market, says Tomas Tobé (M).
