The European Union is preparing sweeping new regulations targeting the addictive design features of major social media platforms, including TikTok, Meta and X, amid mounting evidence linking their use to serious mental health harm among children and teenagers.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the plans in a speech in Copenhagen, painting a stark picture of digital life for young people today.
“Sleep deprivation, depression, anxiety, self-harm, addictive behaviour, cyberbullying, grooming, exploitation, suicide,” she said. “These risks are the result of business models that treat our children’s attention as a commodity.”
At the centre of the EU’s push is the forthcoming Digital Fairness Act (DFA), expected to be proposed later this year.
The legislation will specifically target what von der Leyen described as “addictive and harmful design practices” — features such as endless scrolling, autoplay and push notifications engineered to maximise time spent on platforms. The DFA will also place strict limits on the use of artificial intelligence within social media environments.
The new rules will build on the existing Digital Services Act (DSA), which already requires large platforms to tackle illegal and harmful content more aggressively. Under that framework, the European Commission has opened investigations into TikTok, X, and Meta’s Instagram and Facebook platforms.
Separately, proceedings have begun against X over the use of its Grok AI tool to generate sexual images of women and children.
Von der Leyen also raised the prospect of setting a minimum age for social media access across EU member states, with a Commission proposal potentially arriving as early as this summer following recommendations from an expert panel.
“The question is not whether young people should have access to social media,” she said. “The question is whether social media should have access to young people.”
The EU’s regulatory push is backed by a growing body of academic and clinical evidence.
A 2024 peer-reviewed systematic review published in Healthcare (MDPI), drawing on a decade of literature across five major databases, found significant challenges to children’s mental wellbeing posed by the rapid evolution of social media from a basic networking platform into a multifaceted tool.
The United States Public Health Service Surgeon General’s 2023 advisory added further weight to those concerns, warning that frequent social media use could be associated with changes in parts of the brain linked to emotions and learning. The advisory said it may also affect impulse control, social behaviour, emotional regulation, and sensitivity to social rewards and punishments.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has warned that media use and screen time are associated with increased risks for children and adolescents, including attention deficits, increased aggression, low self-esteem and depression.
The American Psychological Association has also highlighted the correlation between high social media use and poor mental health among adolescents.
Gender disparities are also pronounced. Research from Pew Research Center found that 34% of teenage girls said social media made them feel worse about their own lives, compared with 20% of boys. The study also found teenagers are more likely today than two years ago to describe their own social media use as excessive.
Spokespeople for TikTok, Meta and X did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the EU’s proposals.
The Commission said enforcement action against Meta is already under way because Instagram and Facebook are allegedly failing to enforce their stated minimum age requirement of 13.
A four-person crew aboard SpaceX's Crew-13 mission, consisting of two U.S. astronauts, a Canadian astrona...
Exiled Russian filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev confronts conscription and moral compromise in wartime Russia in Minotaur, a drama released near...
As Ethiopia's rainy season retreats and the landscape turns green beneath clearer skies, millions of Oromo people gather to celebrate Irreecha,...
The co-pilot of Israel bound flydubai flight attempted to carry out a “terrorist attack” with an axe during the flight, the United Arab Emirates prosecutor general said on Saturday.
Hammam al-Hammami, the Flydubai co-pilot accused of stabbing the captain of an Israel-bound flight on Wednesday in a suspected terrorist attack, was banned from flying by Oman over concerns about his radical views, U.S. media reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Two Iranian nationals have been charged in Britain with preparing a suspected terrorist attack targeting the Jewish community in northern England, police said on Friday (2 October).
A major bridge across the Dnipro river in Kyiv was hit in a Russian air attack on Saturday, the city's mayor, Vitali Klitschko said, as strikes on the capital's infrastructure continue.
Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev warned against interference from outside actors in remarks at the 8th Congress of the New Azerbaijan Party in Baku on Friday 2 October.
Global cholera deaths reached their highest annual level in more than 20 years in 2025, despite a decline in reported cases, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Chinese researchers have developed the world’s smallest CT scanner, a portable device designed to produce images of tiny fossils and archaeological relics.
Here's your AnewZ Daily Brief for 17 September 2026. These are the top five stories making headlines in the field of health.
Doctors in St. Louis have successfully separated Ethiopian two-year-old twin girls who were born joined at the head after a months-long series of complex operations culminating in a nearly 25-hour final procedure, doctors said on Wednesday.
Tobacco use may significantly reduce fertility in both men and women, according to a new World Health Organization (WHO) publication that highlights growing evidence linking smoking and exposure to second-hand smoke with reproductive health problems.
You can download the AnewZ application from Play Store and the App Store.
What is your opinion on this topic?
Leave the first comment