Meta has taken a step forward in the midst of the debate on how to control minors' access to the Internet in Europe. The company released a statement today endorsing the concept of 'digital age of majority' and supporting the implementation of measures to verify the age of minors when accessing network applications.
The timing chosen by the company is not coincidental. Last Tuesday, Denmark took over the presidency of the Council of the European Union and has set as one of the priorities for this semester the imposition of these age verification mechanisms.
In addition, a group of countries including Spain, which sent a letter along with ten other member states urging to limit minors' access to social networks. The proposal focuses on social networks and leaves it to the countries to set the ages for granting this age of majority.
Meta's vision is that, if the so-called 'digital age of majority' is established, it should not be limited to social networks only but should also extend to all applications. "Young people use a wide variety of applications, at least 40 per week on average, including games, streaming platforms, messaging, and browsing. Focusing solely on social networks would overlook part of the context and could push teenagers towards unregulated and less secure digital spaces," conveyed the company led by Mark Zuckerberg.
"There must be parental authorization for parents to decide which applications their children download," stated Meta's Public Affairs Director in Spain, José Luis Zimmermann, in statements to EL MUNDO. The executive defends the company's position and emphasizes that this is the vision supported by 75% of parents, according to a report commissioned to the polling firm Morning Consult by the company. This contrasts, he insists, with other ideas, such as the ban on minors' access to social networks, a measure with which the French Prime Minister, Emmanuel Macron, threatened tech giants a few weeks ago if they did not implement these mechanisms for minors under 16 years old.
In this research, parents also support age verification through app stores, something that would put pressure on installing these mechanisms on Google and Apple, the two most widely used stores worldwide, thanks to Android and iOS. This is based on the idea that it is easier to perform a single identification for all applications than to create individual controls that would require more focused proposals on social networks specifically.
The measure has been promoted by the company since last year and has found support in several European governments. In the case of Spain, the draft law for the protection of minors in digital environments includes that all devices must include parental controls.
"This must be accompanied by a robust verification system. We have worked extensively with the administration on this (...) We are open to any solution that is efficient, respects privacy, and is easy for parents," pointed out the Meta executive.
Another major European consensus shown in the Meta survey is that this digital age of majority should be set at 16 years old, an age that is predominantly approved by parents in the nine countries surveyed. However, at the national level, it is noteworthy that Spain, along with Italy, is the country where there is by far more support for the virtual age of majority to coincide with the physical age and be at 18 years old, in addition to being the state with the least support for content verifications to be done at the app store level.
Almost a year ago, Meta introduced a pioneering tool on Instagram to facilitate parental control over their children's actions on the platform: Teen accounts.
So far, 54 million of these accounts have been created on the company's social networks, and Zimmermann highlights that among these accounts, 94% of teenagers who have surpassed the mandatory age of 16 have voluntarily maintained their accounts with parental protection until they turn 18.