Road to the State of the European Union – Policy Wishlist Series II
Sole Pera
Rethinking Regulation: A Developmental Approach to Children’s Digital Lives
WISH: A developmental approach made operational
Much of the current debate still asks whether children should be on social media at all. But social platforms are only one part of the environment shaping young people’s online experiences. The European Commission’s special panel on online safety’s report recognises that children’s online experiences extend beyond social media into broader ecosystems influenced by algorithms, design choices, and emerging technologies. If regulation focuses only on social platforms, many of the technologies doing the real shaping remain outside the frame.
Social media is the visible layer. It isn’t the whole ecosystem.
Children are not a homogeneous group. Age, developmental stage, vulnerabilities, and usage patterns shape how digital systems affect them. A ten-year-old encounters different risks from algorithmic recommendations than a sixteen-year-old using generative artificial intelligence (AI) for learning, creativity, or self-expression. This matters because children do not experience “the internet” as a single entity. They experience highly personalised environments shaped by recommendations, search results, rankings, and AI-generated content. Policymakers need evidence about the systems children interact with, not only the services that attract the most public attention.
Public opinion reflects this complexity. Support for restricting minors’ social media use is widespread across Europe, but confidence that such restrictions are effective varies by country. Banning access alone does not answer the more puzzling question of what children encounter once they are online.
My one wish is a developmental approach, made operational: identify which harms, for whom, and under what conditions, before deciding what to ban, restrict, or redesign. Ongoing independent assessment of child-facing digital spaces would help achieve exactly that: shifting the conversation from whether children should be online to what they actually experience once they are there.
Dr Sole Pera is an associate professor in the web information systems group and director of studies for the master of science in data and artificial intelligence technology at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). Her work covers how search and recommender technologies shape the information‑seeking behaviour of children and teens, identifying risks tied to algorithmic limitations as well as developmental needs and growing reliance on mainstream tools. An active member of the research community, Professor Pera served as program chair for the Association Computer Machinery (ACM)’s conference on recommender systems (RecSys) and currently sits as globalisation co-chair in ACM. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Universidad Tecnológica Nacional (Argentina) and a master’s degree and a doctoral degree in Computer Science from Brigham Young University.
This blog post appeared on Social Media Ban for Kids, an interactive website managed by The Lisbon Council, a Brussels-based think tank, to gather available evidence and data points on the social media ban for children. Its website is https://socialmediaban.lisboncouncil.net/.