Austria Moves to Ban Social Media for Children Under 14

Austria is preparing legislation to ban children under the age of 14 from using social media platforms, Engadget reports. The move makes Austria the latest European country to pursue age-based restrictions on social media access, joining a growing wave of similar legislation across Australia, Norway, and parts of the United States. Austria's proposal would require platforms to verify user ages and block access for minors below the threshold. Enforcement remains the key challenge: prior social media age restriction laws have faced consistent criticism for being difficult to implement without invasive identity verification. The European trend is accelerating in part because the EU's existing digital regulations, including the Digital Services Act, have not produced the child safety outcomes governments expected.