'The harms have come to outweigh the benefits' of social media, researcher says

To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Cover image: © France 24 11:27 Issued on: 17/09/2026 - 21:29Modified: 17/09/2026 - 21:29 The EU laid out plans Thursday for strict age limits for children to access social media, games and AI assistants -- and on forcing companies to make platforms safe before minors use them. Speaking with FRANCE 24's Mark Owen, Lisa Dittmer, Researcher, Children and Young People’s Digital Rights at Amnesty International, says that "the harms have come to outweigh the benefits of social media and it is time for the EU to regulate at the design level, not simply accepting that responsibility be pushed on to parents". Keywords for this article