Children and adolescents cannot stop looking at their screens, and this hurts their health.

The time that young people spend on social media has more than doubled from 2010 to about three hours a day.

More than 1 in 10 adolescents showed signs of problematic and addictive use of social media in 2022, including the difficulty of limiting their use and deprivation syndromes, according to the World Health Organization.

“Everyone knows it is addictive,” said Hanna Kuzmitovic, a Polish high school student who worked with the EU Polish Presidency on this issue. “I know the dangers, the benefits,” he said. “I still use it.”

By urging public health experts, European governments are considering new ways to keep young people away from their phones through age verification, awareness campaigns, and even bans on social media.

Countries have the freedom to put their own restrictions, and they do. President Emmanuel Macron calls for a complete ban on access to people under 15 in France, while Denmark, Greece, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and other countries want new restrictions.

In the meantime, technology companies are applying measures such as content restrictions by age, disabling certain functions and their own privacy features – although some argue that these are not enough and the right way to move on has not yet been decided.

By carrying responsibility

Some experts argue that social media are not all bad and can offer young people, Politico notes.

“Some types of technology [ήταν] In fact, well enough for the creation of friendly relationships and the intimacy of friendly relationships, “said Jessica Motryropski, president of the University of Amsterdam’s communications research school and YouTube adviser to protect minors, repeating various studies.

However, increasing elements link social with reduced well -being, including depression and sleep disorders, along with higher substance use levels – things that can no longer be ignored.

“There must be a regulation” and “some form of recognition by technology companies that they hurt adolescents and children – something must be done,” said Cantri Souva, director of Mental Health Europe.

He also believes that it is important to have a dialogue with technology companies instead of rivalry. “But if there is no self -regulation or the terms of regulation are not clear enough, then rules must be set.”

Health experts argue that existing regulatory tools are not sufficient. They want more action than technology companies, which, they say, are planning their platforms to cause addiction.

Thio Cobernol, a neuropsychiatrist and former professor at the Amsterdam Free University, who supports the ban on social media for children, said the regulation should focus on companies. Otherwise, “It’s like fighting a drug without doing anything for the producers.”

Social media, such as gambling, tobacco and alcohol, ‘Depend on the state of refusal for the lesions they cause’, Mark PEIKRIOU, Professor of Public Health at the London School of Health and Tropical Medicine, said. They are no different from any other kind of addiction, he added.

In June, the Ministers of Health approved conclusions with the EU Council, calling on countries to consider preventive policies to regulate young people access to digital technologies. These include “screen -free zones” and “digital boundaries” within schools while digital platform designers are urged to “take on greater responsibility”.

Law-landmark?

One of the most important legislation on online platforms is the Digital Services Act (DSA) Law on Digital Services. It calls on social media to establish “appropriate and proportionate measures to ensure a high level of privacy, security and protection of minors”.

Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, as well as Tiktok, are under investigation into DSA rules for minors.

Since the other landmark law only charges vague responsibility on social networking platforms, the EU executive has compiled a set of extremely controversial guidelines to specify the actions they need to do.

These include non -exploitation of minors’ browsing habits to submit content proposals, confidentiality and safety by default in the settings and examining the disabled of certain functions, such as access to the camera.

However, guidelines are not binding and if minors lie about their age or their parents bypass the checks, have no power. This has led to a displacement of the discussion to how platforms can verify the age of users.

The debate on the prohibition

There are doubts, even among the most ardent supporters of strict action, and adolescents themselves, that a ban would be effective.

“Well-applied age verification, parenting tools and digital education programs,” for example, could achieve better results than bans, said Natasa Azopardi-Muskat’s Health Director.

Others, including Kuzmitovic, are worried that there are always ways to bypass bans and restrictions, making them ineffective.

For their part, European Ministers of Health believe that there are no sufficient evidence at this stage to support a complete ban.

“How do you impose this?” The Cyprus Minister of Health, Michael Damianos, said. The “biggest issue” is to ensure that policies work in practice.

A ban on social media “It’s really and truly a step towards the unknown. Such a policy is not supported by evidence ‘, Malta’s Minister of Health, Joe Etienne Amla, noted. “But on the other hand … Do we know there is a problem, should our lack of data paralyze and freeze, and do nothing about it?”