Statement from the Ombudsman for Children’s Office (OCO) on the new EU Kids Act

The EU Kids Act announced yesterday recognises the urgent need to address the real safety concerns for children and young people in enjoying their digital rights. The OCO welcomes the EU Commission President’s explicit recognition that children being exposed to addictive features, extreme content and AI-generated sexualised images does not have to be simply accepted. The OCO has long called for a child’s rights approach to online safety; we believe the onus should be on social media companies to ensure their platforms are safe by design for their users, in this case children. This requirement should be the bare minimum standard for platforms, and they shouldn’t be let off the hook. Independent auditing and strong enforcement will be critical to ensuring compliance. Young people themselves have long told us that they want to be able to enjoy being online safely and not come across harmful or extreme content. 63% of teenagers we surveyed on this topic in 2024 told us that they hear more extreme views online than in person. This statistic speaks for itself. Numerous reports and submissions by the OCO have called for the issue of recommender algorithms to be addressed. Platforms should be required to have recommender algorithms off by default and disabled entirely for children, as well as addictive design features such as infinite scroll and continuous feed design. Questions remain regarding how each of the proposed measures for different age groups of children will work in practice. To ensure the rights of all children are protected, companies should be obliged to carry out child rights impact assessments of all product and services before being made available to children. The OCO will review the proposal as further details emerge and continue to engage with Government on the important issue of online safety.

• September 2026