Commission welcomes G7 agreement on common principles for protecting minors online

The Commission welcomes today's agreement by G7 digital and tech ministers on a Common Set of Principles for a safer and more secure digital space for minors.

For the first time, the G7 - including Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union - has agreed on common principles to protect minors online that are directly inspired by the EU's pioneering approach to online safety for children. These principles reflect the EU's leadership in fostering collective action to create a safer digital world for children and demonstrate this goal is shared by our likeminded partners.

The agreed principles are firmly based on the EU's ambitious approach, which combines decisive enforcement actions to hold platforms accountable with a collective societal effort to strengthen media literacy and raise awareness. Specifically, they reflect existing measures at EU level to protect and empower children, from the Digital Services Act (DSA) and its Guidelines on the protection of minors, over the Better Internet for Kids Strategy (BIK+), to the AI Act and the action plan against cyberbullying, and beyond.

Ensuring online safety for minors

The G7 digital and tech ministers adopted seven Common Principles to define a safer and more secure digital space for children and teenagers while preserving safety, privacy, as well as fundamental freedoms and rights - building upon the extensive work that the EU is already doing to protect and empower minors online.

The common principles will contribute to empowering children, parents, guardians, and teachers, so that minors can benefit fully from new technologies. They establish a clear commitment to the protection of privacy and fundamental rights online.

The principles call for:

• The implementation of effective risk management, assessment, and mitigation measures, embedded in safety-by-design approaches. This should be reinforced by meaningful transparency throughout the design and development of digital services.
• Robust, reliable, and privacy-preserving age assurance solutions to support age-appropriate online experiences for minors and prevent them from accessing age-restricted digital services.
• A high level of privacy and safety for minors' accounts, with features such as recommendation systems designed to minimise excessive online engagement, while also providing children with tools to be more in control of their online experiences.
• Strong measures to prevent the generation, creation, and distribution, including through AI, of child sexual abuse material and non-consensual intimate images. These measures should be accompanied by robust support systems for victims.
• Access to simple, effective and interoperable parental tools for parents and guardians, to help them supervise minors' activities online.
• Comprehensive digital literacy programs that are easily accessible by parents, teachers and minors, to help them better understand digital systems and recognise risks, including those posed by generative AI.
• Cooperation between digital services and researchers to enable data sharing with the aim of improving the understanding of risks and strengthening solutions available to protect minors online.

The G7 ministers called on digital service providers to translate these principles into actions. Building a safer digital space for minors requires a collective effort between providers, national authorities, civil society, parents, teachers, and minors, whose voices and rights are central in this process. Strengthening international cooperation between G7 partners and relevant actors remain a priority to effectively protect minors online. These principles will be implemented through an action plan featuring concrete initiatives to foster a safer and more secure digital environment for minors and strengthening scientific knowledge of digital services, with several specific measures already defined.

Background

Digital services can be a powerful tool for minors to learn, discover and connect with others. However, scientific evidence increasingly highlights how these services - along with new technologies, such as generative AI - can pose significant risks to minors' physical and mental health, privacy, and security, potentially impacting their cognitive and social development.

The EU has adopted one of the most comprehensive frameworks for minors' safety online. This includes the Digital Services Act (DSA) and its Guidelines on the protection of minors, the Safer Internet Centres under the Better Internet for Kids Strategy (BIK+), as well as the Cyberbullying Action Plan and the Communication on a comprehensive approach to mental health. The EU is also advancing rules to combat child sexual abuse online, including finalising measures to protect minors from exploitation. The Commission has already developed a blueprint for an EU Age Verification app, which will serve as the reference standard for a user-friendly and privacy-preserving age verification method, fully interoperable with the future EU Digital Identity Wallets.

To support the enforcement of the DSA, including in protecting minors, the Commission has signed cooperation agreements with key national regulators. These include Australia's eSafety Commissioner, the UK's OfCom, and Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. The agreements allow for closer cooperation on common issues, enabling the sharing of information and expertise.

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