News & Events

Trilligent continues its global Trilligent Tech Talks series, bringing together regulators, industry representatives and safety experts to discuss the most pressing questions in digital policy. Our Brussels event, held on June 24, 2026, explored how stakeholders are turning age assurance principles into effective and reliable youth protection across Europe — and what it will take to build digital environments that are genuinely safe for children and young people. 

The panel, moderated by Sara Brandstätter, Data Privacy and Security Reporter at MLex, brought together Maria Donde, Director of International Affairs at Coimisiún na Meán, and Julie Dawson, Chief Policy & Regulatory Officer at Yoti, to explore the practical realities of building youth protection infrastructure across Europe. 

A Ban is Not a Strategy

Australia recently became the first country in the world to introduce a legal minimum age for social media, placing the responsibility for enforcement squarely on platforms. Australia’s clearest lesson is that its social media ban for under-16s was never presented as a single solution. It sits inside a broader package covering prevention, protection, education, online safety by design, regulatory enforcement, and support for parents, children and schools. Any EU age-restriction measure would benefit from sitting inside a holistic child safety framework — and pass several tests: does it serve children’s rights, as well as their safety? Is it feasible, proportionate, and effective?

The Environment Can Also Be the Problem, Not Just the Age

Restricting access does not make a service safer if the environment itself remains harmful. Australia is already seeing young people use VPNs to bypass restrictions — a fundamental challenge to the logic of access-based regulation. The question policymakers must therefore ask is whether the wider digital environment is safe and age-appropriate in the first place. There is a general consensus that infinite scroll, streaks, engagement-optimized algorithms, grooming risks and addictive design patterns harm children regardless of whether they have been formally age-verified. Services that can demonstrate genuinely safe design should remain accessible; those that cannot should face meaningful restrictions. 

Features, Not Just Platforms

Defining which services fall within the scope of a ban presents a significant practical challenge — platforms combine social networking, messaging, content and gaming in ways that resist clean categorization. There is a general consensus evolving that a features-based approach, targeting harmful design elements rather than named platform categories, would be more technology-neutral, harder to circumvent through rebranding, and more adaptable as the digital landscape evolves. This framing also extends naturally beyond social media to AI companions, chatbots, connected toys and mixed-age gaming environments — all of which present risks a social-media-only framework would not capture. 

Age Assurance: Building Trustworthy Infrastructure

Age assurance is already operating at scale globally, with billions of checks taking place across a wide range of services. The challenge is building a trustworthy, privacy-respecting, and interoperable infrastructure around it. Consumers should have genuine choice — combining reusable credentials, age estimation, digital wallets and government-backed options — rather than being funneled toward a single mandatory solution. Standards such as ISO/IEC 27566 and independent certification frameworks can help regulators and companies compare approaches consistently, building an ecosystem that governments, NGOs and users can trust. 

Because age assurance raises significant privacy considerations, online safety and data protection regulators must work closely together. Regulatory cooperation is already developing internationally — through common statements on age assurance, shared definitions and terminology, and active dialogue with regulators beyond Europe, including Brazil, which is currently consulting on its own child protection requirements. The landscape is also likely to remain hybrid for several years — no single solution at device, operating system, app store or platform level is likely to dominate in the near term, and policymakers should be cautious about prescribing a single mandatory approach before the ecosystem has had the opportunity to develop and prove what works. 

The EU’s Toolkit: What Platforms Should Do Now

The Digital Services Act (DSA) is already in force, and platforms should not wait for the next legislative initiative. The Act applies to all online intermediary services offered in the EU, with obligations scaling by size and impact — very large online platforms and search engines with over 45 million monthly active users in the EU face the most stringent requirements, while micro and small enterprises benefit from lighter obligations. Article 28 and the forthcoming guidelines on child protection already shape what is expected — platforms should be reviewing terms of service, identifying harmful features, conducting risk and impact assessments and building evidence of safe design. Investigations already underway into very large platforms will begin to define what good practice looks like in concrete terms. 

Looking ahead, the possible Digital Fairness Act — with the Commission to publish a formal proposal by the end of the year — represents a potential vehicle for addressing harmful design features across a wider range of digital environments. The discussion also surfaced the product safety analogy as a useful frame: just as physical products must demonstrate conformity with safety standards before reaching the market, digital services could be expected to demonstrate safe design proactively rather than simply responding to harm after the fact. For industry, harmonization across Member States — on age thresholds, enforcement models and compliance expectations — remains an urgent priority. 

Toward Child-centered Digital Policy

The discussion converged on several principles that should guide the EU’s next steps: 

• Involve children, not just adults: Adult’s point of view alone should not drive policy. Children’s rights impact assessments — including the UNICEF Child Rights Impact Assessment framework — and direct engagement with young people are essential — social media also serves genuine social needs for teenagers, and policy must reflect this balance. 
• Think beyond social media: Child protection must be holistic and extend to the full range of digital environments children inhabit, from gaming platforms and AI companions to connected toys and online communities. 
• Regulate the environment, not just the gate: If services are genuinely designed to be safe for children, the case for blanket age-based access restrictions weakens considerably. Safe design is the goal; age verification is one tool among many. 
• Build evidence, not just rules: Industry, regulators and civil society should invest jointly in understanding what design features cause harm and what interventions actually work — so that policy is effective and future proof rather than reactive. 

What You Can Do Now

The EU’s approach to child online safety is still being shaped — the expert panel recommendations are due July 13, DSA enforcement is accelerating, and the broader legislative landscape remains in flux. This is the moment to engage. Platforms that have not yet reviewed their obligations under the DSA should consider doing so now and building evidence of safe design. Industry associations should be contributing to the standards and certification frameworks now under development. Policymakers and civil society should be ensuring that children’s voices are part of the process, not an afterthought. 

At Trilligent, we closely follow the evolving landscape of digital regulation, including child online safety, DSA enforcement and age assurance frameworks. Our global team is well-positioned to help clients navigate these complex and fast-moving frameworks and ensure their voice is heard by policymakers and influential stakeholders shaping the future of digital policy. Reach out if you’d like to explore how these developments impact your business or stay ahead of the curve.