§6.1.2 Determining whether to put in place access restrictions supported by age assurance measures

31. Before deciding whether to put in place any access restrictions based on age, supported by age assurance methods, providers of online platforms accessible to minors should always conduct an assessment to determine whether such a measure is appropriate to ensure a high level of privacy, safety and security for minors on their service and whether it is proportionate, or whether such a high level may be achieved already by relying on other less far-reaching measures (34). In this regard, the Commission is of the view that providers should consider access restrictions based on age, supported by age assurance measures as a complementary tool to measures set out in other sections of these guidelines. In other words, access restrictions and age assurance alone cannot be substitutes for measures recommended elsewhere in these guidelines. 32. Such an assessment should ensure that any restriction to the exercise of fundamental rights and freedoms of the recipients, especially minors, is proportionate. Consequently, the Commission considers that providers of online platforms should make the result of such an assessment publicly available on the online interface of its service, both if the assessment concludes that no access restriction supported by age assurance is required or that such a restriction would be an appropriate and proportionate measure. 33. The Commission notes that a lower accuracy of age estimation solutions does not automatically equate to a lower impact on the fundamental rights and freedoms of recipients, as less accurate solutions may process more personal data than more accurate ones. They may also prevent some children from accessing online platforms that they may otherwise be able to access due to the lower level of accuracy. Therefore, when considering age estimation methods that require the processing of personal data, providers of online platforms accessible to minors should ensure that data protection principles, especially data minimisation, are properly implemented and remain robust over time and take into account the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) statement on Age Assurance (35). 34. The Commission is of the view that, in order to ensure a high level of privacy, safety and security of minors on their services, providers of online platforms accessible to minors that consider access restrictions based on age assurance methods necessary and proportionate should provide information about any age assurance solutions they identified and their adequacy and effectiveness. They should also provide an overview of the performance metrics used to measure this, such as false positive and false negative rates, and accuracy and recall rates. 35. Participation of children in the design, implementation, and evaluation of age restrictions and age assurance methods should be foreseen. 36. Online platforms accessible to minors might have only some content, sections, or functions that pose a risk to minors or may have parts of their platform where the risk can be mitigated by other measures and/or parts where it cannot. In these cases, instead of age-restricting the service as a whole, providers of such online platforms should assess which content, sections or functions on their platform carry risks for minors and implement access restrictions supported by age assurance methods to reduce these risks for minors in proportionate and appropriate ways. For example, parts of social media services with content, sections or functions that may pose a risk to minors, such as adult-restricted sections of a social media, or sections with adult-restricted commercial communications or adult-restricted product placements by influencers should only be made available to adult users whose age has been verified accordingly.

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Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-09-07