The European Parliament wants the EU to treat social media safety as a shared problem rather than a family one, voting 395 to 136, with 80 abstentions, for what it calls an integrated European strategy covering legislators, families and schools. The report focuses on younger users, and it argues that platforms should carry more of the burden for protecting them from harmful or manipulative content.
Among the practical demands aimed at companies is age verification that does not collect or store personal data, and a youth mode that switches off targeted advertising for minors. MEPs also want social media firms to be more open about how their recommendation algorithms work, and to build in risk-based safeguards for those systems. They go further on design, calling for measures that would ban the most addictive practices and reduce the pull of persuasive features.
The report extends to artificial intelligence. MEPs ask for mandatory ethical standards for AI companions, more transparency about how AI models are trained, and a ban on AI systems generating, manipulating or altering images or videos showing a person's sexual content without consent.
Video-sharing platforms are the next target. Parliament sees the upcoming revision of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive as a chance to shield young people from illegal and harmful content on those services, and it wants the Commission to check whether the work of influencers and professional content creators falls under that law. MEPs also want clearer rules on the status and responsibilities of those creators, so that they face the same advertising transparency obligations as media service providers.
On influencers specifically, MEPs ask the Commission and EU governments to draw up an EU-level code of conduct covering influencers, agencies and online platforms, pointing to the influence such figures have on how young people see themselves. A legal definition of influencer marketing and a ban on unfair commercial practices would add transparency, the report says, along with disclosure of sponsorship deals.
Rapporteur Sandro Ruotolo, an S&D member from Italy, framed the vote around age limits and platform duty. "No social media under 13, supervised access from 13 to 15, including a one-hour daily limit, and greater autonomy thereafter," he said, adding that "platforms must make their products safe".
The push follows the annual State of the European Union debate, where MEPs and President von der Leyen discussed the EU's immediate challenges, social media among them. Parliament has been active on related ground this month, including a report warning of increased hybrid attacks against the EU and a call from its employment committee for a law protecting workers from work-related psychosocial risks.
The report leans on Eurostat figures showing that 98% of people aged 16 to 29 in the EU go online daily, against 90% of the wider population, with 89% of young people routinely creating profiles and posting messages on social networks in 2025. What the vote does not settle is timing: the text sets out what MEPs want from the Commission and platforms, but no legislative proposal, deadline or enforcement date is attached.
