Are EU Kidding Me? Notes from a Poorly Drafted Social Media Ban
The EU Kids Act is a drafting disaster. I've written a new paper on all the things — or at least some of them — that are wrong with it.
In September 2026, the European Commission published a proposed EU KIDS Act, responding to the demand for restrictions and further design obligations applying to digital services accessible to children, including social media. Regardless of what one believes about the merits of this policy direction, the EU KIDS Act is absolutely not the legislative text we need. The scope and drafting are little short of chaotic, full of holes, enormous ambiguities, and unintended consequences. Recitals contradict articles. The use of scope borrowed from other pieces of legislation not designed for this purpose brings services into scope that should not be subject to the relevant provisions, like book-recommendation websites, music services, or exercise trackers. The infrastructural requirement for assurance of age and parental responsibility attestation simply omits enormous issues of complex families and childhoods. Complex design obligations are written in ways that can be plausibly interpreted as implicitly prohibiting entire swathes of products, such as voice assistants.
I have written an article which outlines these issues, and many more. The Commission should withdraw this proposal and reissue a workable and realistic text.
Link to PDF of article https://files.michae.lv/papers/veale_areEUkiddingme.pdf