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In recent months, several European countries have put restrictions on social media use by minors on the agenda. France, Spain, Denmark, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands are considering or introducing measures that seek to curb children’s online presence through age restrictions, mandatory identification, or platform-level regulation.
These initiatives are seemingly driven by mental health and child protection concerns, particularly in relation to screen use, online harassment, and access to pornographic content.
However, MCC Brussels warns in its new study that these bans on social media or mandatory digital identification are not necessarily a real solution and may even lead to a restriction of digital freedoms in the long term.
The Hungarian founded think-tank emphasized that while protecting children online is a legitimate and urgent goal, blanket bans are “blunt instruments” that can easily lead to disproportionate state intervention.
In an interview with Hungary Today, Executive Director Frank Füredi pointed out that such bans do not address the root problem, which is the broader pornification of culture and the erosion of boundaries between public and private life.
Frank Füredi, Executive Director of MCC Brussels. Photo: MTI/Purger Tamás
“Social media platforms are not synonymous with online pornography. Explicit material exists across the wider internet, including on dedicated websites beyond the reach of social media bans.
Excluding minors from mainstream platforms would not eliminate access; it would likely push them toward less regulated and more opaque online spaces, where safeguards are weaker and harms more difficult to detect or mitigate.
These bans represent an over-broad policy response to a poorly defined problem. While targeted and proportionate measures to reduce minors’ exposure to explicit material are reasonable, sweeping exclusions from the digital public square are neither proportionate nor evidence-based. The scientific evidence linking general social media use to severe psychological harm remains contested, with correlations often small and highly context-dependent.”
In practice, such bans appear more politically symbolic than substantively effective-highly communicable gestures that signal action without solving the underlying issue,”
he stated.
Frank Füredi also believes that once a state asserts authority to restrict access to digital platforms “for safety,” it establishes a precedent. “Under frameworks such as the Digital Services Act and related initiatives, contested speech is increasingly framed as a security or regulatory issue. The exclusion of minors becomes a wedge: if access can be restricted in the name of protecting children, further controls over content and participation can more easily follow in the name of protecting democracy or social harmony,” he said.
Photo: Pixabay
He pointed out that this “ban for minors” is becoming a system of universal surveillance, since all users, not just minors, must be subjected to verification processes.
This raises profound civil liberties concerns. Online anonymity has long been a cornerstone of free expression, political dissent, and open debate. Age-verification systems risk dismantling this anonymity incrementally,”
he noted.
The Executive Director of MCC Brussels also warned that there is no guarantee that the digital identification infrastructure later will not be extended to additional types of content or platforms. “History shows that regulatory infrastructures, once built, rarely remain confined to their original purpose. What begins as a tool to protect minors from explicit content can be extended to regulate speech deemed ‘harmful’, ‘misleading’, or ‘destabilizing.’ The logic of expansion is embedded in the system itself.”
Once governments and EU institutions possess the technical capacity to control who accesses the internet—and potentially what they say —the pressure to use that capacity will grow. Age-gating for pornography today can become access controls for political content tomorrow.”
“This is why MCC Brussels argues that these measures are not merely misguided child-protection policies. They represent a structural shift toward greater state management of digital life,” he concluded.
Fact
The debate on restricting social media usage for minors has been put on the agenda in Hungary previously. The government has already introduced a ban on mobile phone use in schools, on the grounds of protecting the learning environment. At a conference in Békéscsaba, State Secretary Máriusz Révész spoke about how the mental state of young people and excessive screen use pose a serious social problem.
The conference underscored the idea that smart devices and the online space have become such an integral part of the lives of most adults and children that members of the growing alpha generation have practically been born into the digital age, which, despite its many opportunities, also poses countless dangers to mental health for both the mental and physical development of children. During the conference, however Máriusz Révész pointed out that we should not “demonize” the digital world, but rather show the youngest generation that the values of the real world are just as good as those of the digital world. The main question of the conference was what parents, teachers, and communities can do to encourage children to exercise more, play together more, read more, and get enough sleep.
Featured photo: Pexels
The post Child Protection or Digital Overreach? Debate Grows Over Social Media Restrictions appeared first on Hungary Today.
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