In the first quarter of 2025, it is likely to start operating Kids Walletof the children’s wallet that will limit the access of minors, under the age of 15, to social media. He stated this while speaking to ERT the Minister of Digital Governance, Dimitris Papastergiouemphasizing that this application can be installed both on children’s mobile phones and tablets.

“I think that all of us who have children or have children in our circle, we see that their addiction to screens is now becoming extreme. Children have forgotten to live normally, they have forgotten to play, they have forgotten that they have friends, they forget to talk and they talk through screens and messages. This should concern us much more strongly and we should take measures. Indeed, many countries have begun to legislate. Australia said “under 16 stops”. France said that under 15 in some media with parental control and parental consent. But we as Europe must see all this a little more strongly. Let’s look at it a little more strongly,” the minister emphasized.

“At the Council of Telecommunications Ministers on Friday I raised this as an issue and there was huge interest from many countries. There are two things that can be done: One is what we do on our child’s cell phone as parents. It’s not that easy though and not all parents are good at setting up such systems. The dual objective is essentially what we are doing here as a country and we can do it immediately. And the other is what Europe is doing now towards digital service providers.

“France said they ban under 15s. How do you actually ban? How do you check the child’s age? Age control is the difficult part and here we come with a proposal. It will also be part of the national planning that says the following: Just as today we have our wallet and we have our identities, it will be done well with a children’s wallet (Kids Wallet), that is to say that the age is checked and identified in our children’s wallet. The parent puts it together with a lot of their parental control settings,” explained Mr. Papastergiou.

“So we can very easily check with a very simple process, without having to make any adjustments, what he sees and what he doesn’t see. And if we agree tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, that we should do it centrally with the providers, if this wallet does not exist on a mobile phone, it should not be opened. In other words, parental control and age control should now be done from the wallet,” he said.

“It’s not a nice thing to say I’m cutting everything. But if today’s reality is what we know it to be, that providers are getting comfortable with giving content out of control, then yes, the answer is to cut it. This proposal is very targeted, which is now starting to gain interest in Europe as well. All countries are interested in how we will be able to check the age of children,” said Mr. Papastergiou and noted that the providers must cooperate. “They must come to the table because there is already a European legislation that says in Article 28 that they must take all the prescribed measures when they know that there are minors on the other side. So from the time that in some way the age is identified, they should do what they are obliged to do.”

The underdog pointed out that technically it is not difficult to do, since the implementation is more or less already done with the big wallet. “The parent will be able to declare their child’s mobile phone, just like we do today with stadium tickets. We can implement it in the first quarter of 2025. But we have to help the parents first, who are lost in this whole story and don’t know how they can help.”