EU to crack down on TikTok, Instagram ‘addictive design’ hooking kids

The EU is clamping down on social media firms and plans to target “addictive design” features on TikTok and Instagram as governments worldwide look to protect children from the harms of social media.

The region will take action against certain features on social media platforms later in the year, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Tuesday at the European Summit on Artificial Intelligence and Children in Denmark.

CNBC has approached ByteDance and Meta for comment.

“We are taking action against TikTok and its addictive design – endless scrolling, autoplay, and push notifications. The same applies to Meta, because we believe Instagram and Facebook are failing to enforce their own minimum age of 13,” Von der Leyen said.

“We are investigating platforms that allow children to go down ‘rabbit holes’ of harmful content – such as videos that promote eating disorders or self-harm,” she added.

The EU’s executive arm has also developed its own age verification app, which has the “highest privacy standards in the world,” according to Von der Leyen.

Member states will soon be able to integrate it into their digital wallets, and it can easily be enforced by online platforms. “No more excuses – the technology for age-verification is available,” the EU chief said.

The EU Commission could have a legal proposal prepared as soon as the summer, as it awaits the advice and findings of its ‘Special Panel of experts on Child Safety Online.’

The EU has been cracking down on U.S Big Tech in the past year as it enforces legislation aimed at strengthening accountability of the tech giants. A slew of fines has drawn criticism from U.S. officials who have warned the bloc risks missing out on partaking in the AI economy.

U.S. President Donald Trump is combating the penalties against U.S. businesses, which have totalled over $7 billion in the past two years.

Apple, Meta, and Google, are among the companies facing fines over violations of the bloc’s antitrust and competition laws, which they have contested.

Trump signed a memorandum in February that would consider issuing tariffs to “combat digital service taxes (DSTs), fines, practices, and policies that foreign governments levy on American companies.”

Earlier this year, the EU Commission launched an investigation against Elon Musk‘s X, formerly known as Twitter, for the spreading of sexually explicit non-consensual content of women and children generated by its chatbot Grok.

The increased legal scrutiny around child safety on social media platforms comes after Meta and YouTube lost a high-profile court ruling in the U.S. in March, which found that design features such as infinite scrolling and autoplay contributed to addiction and mental health harms in teenagers.

More recently, the Commission found that Meta breached the EU’s Digital Services Act by failing to keep under-13s off its platforms, with a preliminary investigation determining that minors are easily able to bypass checks.

Meanwhile, a social ban for under-16s is gaining traction with governments worldwide, after Australia became the first country to enforce a sweeping ban in December. Several European countries including Spain, France, and the U.K., are proposing their own legislation to keep children off social media.