EU Commission Unveils Draft ‘Kids Act’ Raising Social-Media Age to 15

Europe has repeatedly used market size to export norms—from the 1995 Data Protection Directive to the 2018 GDPR—forcing global tech redesign. This draft echoes the 1998 U.S. COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) age-13 threshold, but pushes the bar two years higher and layers content-design rules reminiscent of 1960s limits on tobacco advertising to youths. It also rides a decade-long trend: France’s failed 2025 under-15 ban, U.K.’s 2021 Age-Appropriate Design Code, and the EU’s own 2024 Digital Services Act. If enacted, the Act could, over a 100-year horizon, normalize age-gated internet architectures much as compulsory schooling once re-shaped childhood in the 19th century, or—if diluted in trilogue—be remembered as another ambitious yet toothless Brussels draft. Either outcome will reveal how far liberal societies are willing to regulate design itself, not just content, in the digital domain.