EU announces plan to restrict social media access for under-15s

She added that under the legislation - if it is approved - companies would be required to submit detailed child safety plans. "For every person under 18, the platforms must follow the principal of safety by design, no toxic or addictive features, no traps, etc," she said.The proposal sets out that age would be verified using the EU's preexisting age verification app.Von der Leyen had previously proposed a social media "delay" for children in Europe, saying in May that "the discussion about a minimum age for social media can no longer be ignored".The policy, formally outlined on Thursday, was also trailed in the EU chief's annual address on Wednesday.Some individual EU countries have already announced their own separate plans to restrict social media for children, including France and Spain.Any potential EU-wide legislation would supersede those, but it would be possible for individual EU members to then go further than the bloc's action.It is not clear which platforms the proposed bloc-wide measures would apply to, but von der Leyen said the Commission had "looked at Australia" when putting together the proposal.