Misplaced accountability: Why should young people be made to pay for the problems Big Tech create?

Should individuals aged 16 and under face restrictions on social media use? The European Parliament thinks so. This position raises pressing questions: What assumptions underpin these recommendations that claim to safeguard young people’s well-being? Can such bans truly guarantee digital welfare? And what exactly changes at age 17: are adolescents suddenly equipped to resist the manipulative design of today’s digital platforms?

In November 2025, the European Parliament passed, by a substantial majority of 483 to 92, with 86 abstentions, a resolution recommending that social media, video-sharing platforms, and AI driven tools be restricted to users aged 16 and under, unless they can obtain parental consent. The underlying message is both familiar and troubling: young people are presumed incapable of navigating the digital world responsibly, while parents are positioned as the primary custodians of digital safety. This creates a circular blame loop in which adolescents are punished for an apparent lack of maturity and parents for an assumed lack of vigilance, all the while technology companies remain largely unaccountable.

At the heart of this approach is a subtle but powerful displacement of responsibility. By focusing on the presumed vulnerabilities of minors, the resolution shifts attention away from big corporations that deliberately design systems to capture attention, manipulate behaviour, and monetise vulnerabilities. These platforms are not neutral. They are engineered using behavioural psychology, algorithmic optimisation, and visibility metrics that exploit users’ desires and insecurities. These mechanisms do not differentiate between minors and adults, yet it is young people’s agency that is curtailed.

Although the Parliament’s report acknowledges harmful design features, such as infinite scrolling, reward loops, dark patterns, and algorithmic profiling of minors, the emphasis remains on age restrictions. This is not inconsequential. By foregrounding age as the primary determinant of risk, the resolution casts young people as inherently incapable of making sound decisions, legitimising paternalistic protection. The result is institutionalised infantilization, elevating parental control as the solution, even when many parents may lack the necessary digital literacies required to make informed decisions.

The reliance on parental consent is thus problematic. Evidence from other contexts, such as China, shows that such measures rarely work and often increase pressure on families. It assumes guardians have the time, knowledge, and commitment to mitigate digital risks; yet digital literacy varies widely across households. Consequently, this approach risks widening existing digital inequalities: digitally literate families can navigate restrictions, while those from marginalised backgrounds face exclusion or reduced opportunities for meaningful online engagement.

The logic presented in this report pays lip service to societal concerns, gesturing at harm reduction while leaving the underlying tech business models largely intact. Even proposed fines for noncompliant companies pale in comparison to the profits and power these firms wield, and history suggests enforcement will be challenging.

Framing well-being primarily through restricted access fails to address systemic design choices that underpin digital harm. Instead of tackling metrics of popularity, performativity, and algorithmic amplification – features that shape understandings of self-worth and reinforce power imbalances, the resolution treats problematic experiences as justification for exclusion. Such restrictions may simply push youth online behaviour underground, encouraging them to bypass age verification systems through account sharing or identity borrowing.

These contradictions sit awkwardly alongside the broader European Commission’s ambitions to build a digitally competent society. The EU’s newly launched DigComp 3.0 Framework promotes digital citizenship, workforce readiness, and digital literacy for everyone. Ironically, a blanket under 16 restriction undermines these goals by limiting young people’s opportunities to engage, experiment, and learn online. A digitally literate society cannot be cultivated by locking out the generations that are expected to shape it from the environments in which such competencies are developed.

The report briefly mentions media and digital literacy, but this deserves deeper scrutiny. Schools and parents are positioned as key actors in fostering safe digital practices, yet what is needed goes beyond training or top-down instruction. Young people require transformative learning opportunities, pedagogies that cultivate critical reasoning, resistance to harmful practices, and the ability to reshape digital practices. Such approaches demand trust in young people as active agents, not passive recipients of protection.

This leads to a larger, often overlooked question: how can we (re)imagine digital infrastructures that do not replicate the commercialised architectures of digital platforms? In the early days of what was then known as the “read and write web”, digital spaces were harnessed to foster expression, collaboration, creativity as well as community. Consolidation of digital tools and platforms by Big Tech has, however, flattened this diversity. Metrics of followers, likes, and shares, often fuelled by asymmetric forms of connection and interaction – “you follow me, but I do not have to follow you, therefore I am more important or have more value” kind of a thing, have replaced community oriented design, rewarding performativity over solidarity, and creating uniform engagement logics across platforms.

What is urgently needed is an alternative vision. If the EU truly seeks to protect young people, it must invest in alternatives: platforms rooted in ethical design, public value, and democratic participation. Such an approach would shift the conversation from restricting young people’s agency to restructuring the digital engagement ecosystem.

Ultimately, the EU Parliament’s proposal distributes the burdens of digital engagement unevenly. Young people lose autonomy and access, in effect, their digital freedoms; parents gain responsibility without adequate support; and technology companies face only minimal disruptions. Digital wellbeing cannot be achieved by shielding young people from digital life while leaving the underlying systems unchanged. Instead of defaulting to restrictions, policy should prioritise healthier digital infrastructures and support the development of genuine digital citizenship for young people and adults alike. Then we can start investing in what we preach: digital democratic practices