Road to the State of the European Union – Policy Wishlist Series IV
Elina Eickstädt
Centring Data and Consumer Protection to Change Platform Business Models
WISH: Centring consumer and data protection to drive systemic change
I am always baffled by policymakers’ awareness of the toxic and dangerous dynamics of large online platforms for children and teenagers, and by their reliance on age-gating proposals to fix the issue. The real question is not whether age-gating works, but why platforms can keep doing business as usual. The $13 billion settlement Meta recently accepted, in exchange for not further disclosing its toxic business practices, shows that there is still no interest in genuine change.
The suppression of organisations that advocate for enforcing the digital services act shows what policymakers and society can expect from efforts to reshape digital spaces.
Large online platforms hold vast amounts of personal data, giving them the power to analyse and exploit individual vulnerabilities, and quietly shape user behaviour. According to the 2026 EU Kids Online comparative study, children are acutely aware of this imbalance. 40% of 10- to 16-year-olds explicitly worry that apps and websites will share their personal data without consent. This issue goes far beyond child-specific safety concerns; it poses a fundamental challenge to autonomy, agency and equality across the entire digital ecosystem.
Policymakers and society have failed us by not having a real conversation about how to design technical systems in an autonomy-respecting way. We are stuck in the perception that this is just the way systems are.
We need to stop centring seemingly simple technological solutions and instead fight data-hungry business models and the extensive surveillance and manipulation mechanisms they rely on. Data protection and consumer protection can translate into child protection; without surveillance-driven business models and addictive designs, we would not have this conversation.
If I could pick one thing for upcoming legislative planning, it would be to centre consumer and data protection to create systematic change that shapes digital futures that are safe and fair for everyone.
Elina Eickstädt is one of the spokespersons at Chaos Computer Club (CCC) and a board member of the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) in Germany. Ms Eickstädt oversees the work of CCC at the European and international levels, including internet governance and standardisation. In her capacity at the OKF, she oversees the organisation’s strategic direction and advises on tech policy issues. Her professional background is in information technologies security and software engineering, where she has been active in several open-source projects and has previously created and maintained her own project. She holds a bachelors degree in applied computer science from the University of applied science Hamburg and is currently working on a masters degree in Techphilosophy at the Technical University of Berlin. She works as a freelance researcher and advisor.
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/.