The Agency for Communication Networks and Services of the Republic of Slovenia, as the Digital Services Coordinator, would like to inform the public that the European Commission has published Guidelines on the protection of minors under the Digital Services Act and presents them below with the aim of raising public awareness.
The Guidelines represent an important step in the European Commission's efforts to enhance the online safety of children and young people under the DSA. The Guidelines offer a set of proportionate and appropriate measures to protect children and young people from online risks and harmful content.
Online platforms bring many benefits to minors, such as access to education, the development of social skills and the promotion of creativity. Despite these benefits, there is a broad consensus among different stakeholders (policy makers, regulators, civil society, researchers, educators and parents) that the current level of privacy, safety and protection of children online is often inadequate. Indeed, the design and features of online platforms create and increase risks for minors.
The key recommendations of the Guidelines are designed to provide comprehensive protection for minors in the digital environment. At the core of the recommendations is ensuring the privacy and security of contacts by automatically setting minors' profiles to "private", which reduces the risk of unwanted contact with strangers. In addition, the guidelines focus on reducing exposure to harmful content and so-called "rabbit holes", which is the continuous recommendation of content and products that encourages a user to spend excessive time and money on a platform based on their previous online activities.
In preventing cyber-bullying and harassment, they emphasise the possibility of blocking and silencing users and adding them to groups only with the explicit consent of the minor. They pay particular attention to preventing blackmail with intimate content, which includes a ban on downloading or capturing screenshots of content posted by minors. The Guidelines also address excessive use and addiction and recommend disabling features and designs that contribute to it. Protection against manipulative commercial practices that take advantage of children and adolescents' lack of knowledge in this area is also highlighted.
An important part of the guidelines recommends the use of effective age verification solutions, provided that they are accurate, reliable, robust, non-intrusive and non-discriminatory. The guidelines also call for measures to improve the control of content accessible to young people and to establish minimum standards for parental control.
The Guidelines are available in all 24 official EU languages and in a family-friendly version, which is currently only available in English.
