The EU Kids Act Would Ban Social Media for Under-13s Across the Bloc
The New York Times·medium signal
Alongside her AI remarks, von der Leyen used the State of the Union address to unveil the Kids Act, a European Commission proposal banning social media for children under 13. A leaked draft reported by Euronews the previous day indicated the Commission was weighing restrictions for under-15s, so the published proposal landed at a lower age threshold than the leak suggested. Pairing the Kids Act with frontier AI pacing in a single address signals the Commission is treating both as child-and-society safety files rather than separate tech-competitiveness ones.