EU MEPs agree on recommendation for Europe to 'make full use of its powers' to ban loot boxes for minors and social media for those under 16

Over the last few months we've seen the EU ramp up its efforts to tackle the possible harms of the online landscape, whether that's the threats that AI poses or threats to minors. On the latter point, gacha and Overwatch gamers need to batten down the hatches because it looks like the political bloc might be coming for your loot boxes. Well, if you're a minor, anyway.

An EU committee—the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee—today adopted a report by popular vote that encourages the European Commission (EC) to tackle several harms that minors face online today. The vote to adopt the report passed with "32 votes in favour, 5 against and with 9 abstentions".

And in addition to proposing a minimum age of 13 for kids to access social media with parental permission, or age 16 without that permission, and some other recommendations, the committee also recommends a loot box ban.

The EC should, the committee says, "ban gambling-like mechanisms such as 'loot boxes' in games accessible to minors."

That's in addition to several other things, such as banning sites that endanger minors, "engagement-based recommender algorithms" for minors, and monetisation or other material incentives for minor influencers.

"MEPs support the idea that persuasive technologies, such as targeted ads, influencer marketing, addictive design, loot boxes and dark patterns, be tackled under the future Digital Fairness Act. The report calls for EU action to address manipulative features like infinite scrolling, autoplay, disappearing stories, and harmful gamification practices that deliberately exploit minors’ behaviour to boost engagement and spending."

That includes loot boxes, general social media access, and even "video sharing platforms and AI (artificial intelligence) companions." The latter two should, the committee recommends, face the same age 16 restriction as social media in general.

Call me a fuddy-duddy (and certainly call me one for using that phrase) but this all seems reasonable to me. The EU has been on a bit of a roll lately, pushing for more IP protections in the face of AI and fining big tech companies for breaking privacy and anti-competitive rules. Adding protecting the mental health of minors onto the list is both unsurprising and nevertheless laudable.

That's especially true given the solid research that shows all the harms that can be done by being exposed to various stimuli so early on in life. Our brains weren't designed to develop while being exposed to such superstimuli as constant (positive or negative) attention from multitudes of semi-anonymous people on social media.

Currently countries can set their own age restrictions on social media, and of course social media companies tend to set their own age restrictions to use their platforms and have their own rules for age verification. Earlier in the year the European Commission introduced new guidelines on the protection of minors under the Digital Services Act, but these are just guidelines and aren't binding. These new committee recommendations seem to encourage the Commission to take a more active role in enforcing some more definite restrictions.

And regarding loot boxes, I'm just glad I grew up gaming on PC before those became a thing. My spending habits aren't amazing at the best of times, so who knows what they'd be like if I'd been trained to gamble for quick and easy dopamine during my mind's most formative years.

All this being said, I have to balance praise for the sentiment with a note of caution about the application. The committee's report "supports the Commission’s efforts to develop privacy-preserving age assurance systems, while warning that such measures must respect children’s rights and privacy, and do not absolve platforms of the responsibility to make their services safe by design."

The latter portion of this is worth highlighting, and not treating as a platitudinal add-on to gloss over. Age verification and even human verification is a hot topic of late, as is digital ID in general, and we need to ensure we're balancing the very real benefits of online restrictions with the potentially very real harms of ID checks and verifications. I have no answers, there are just pros and cons to weigh, and hopefully solutions that can keep the scales nice and balanced.