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The last few months have produced three major events in the global debate on protecting children online: the first assessment of the Australian ban, the technical launch of the European age-verification app, and the consolidation of broad scientific opposition to prohibitive approaches — opposition now officially shared by Estonia as well. All three concern us directly, and all three contradict the direction Romania is heading.
Australia: lessons from wrong questions and wrong answers
“To ban or not to ban?” was the main theme around which the Australian political debate unfolded regarding the general well-being of children and adolescents. Well-being was presumed to be catastrophically affected by social media, as concluded by Jonathan Haidt’s controversial book “The Anxious Generation,” which served as the entire basis for the Australian experiment.
In reality, as shown by the numerous analyses of this book, the idea that digital technologies are rewiring children’s brains and causing an epidemic of mental illness is not supported by science. Hundreds of researchers have looked for the major effects suggested by Haidt in that book, but the results have produced a mix of nonexistent, small, and mixed associations. The data are mostly correlational, and when associations are identified over time, they suggest not that social media causes depression, for instance, but that young people who already have mental health problems tend to use platforms more often or in different ways.
Nevertheless, in December 2025, Australia became the first developed country to ban social media for adolescents under 16: under the threat of sanctions worth tens of millions of dollars, the top 10 social media networks must prevent the creation of, monitor, and close the accounts of adolescents.
The measure was adopted despite the opposition of thousands of experts, researchers, institutions, and organizations, both Australian and international, from dozens of fields of activity, who continue to convey, in countless letters, position statements, and specialist publications, the following points, among others:
- The only available scientific evidence accepted by the international research community shows that the effects of social media on adolescent health are null, small or mixed.
- The real and growing health or well-being problems among adolescents are the result of a vast accumulation of environmental factors from the physical world (socio-economic) and genetic factors.
- Banning adolescents from social media cannot solve either the vast and diverse problems young people face in their lives, or the problems of social media that affect the entire population.
- The negative effects of a ban can have catastrophic consequences in terms of security, health, crime, rights, and well-being, among others.
- World countries should wait for the conclusions of Australian research on this experiment.
Following the journalistic and institutional investigations of recent months that documented the outline of the Australian ban’s failure, the first statistical conclusions are now emerging.
Thus, the data show that despite the announced closure of over 5 million teenagers’ accounts, approximately 2/3 of Australian young people under 16 continue to use social media with one or more accounts, and the majority of young people managed to keep the accounts they held prior to the ban, with majority access to each of the most popular social media networks (TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube).
Young people also declared, in an overwhelming majority (70%), that it was easy to circumvent the bans, which we know are achieved either through facial recognition failures, fake IDs, accounts purchased on the black market, or migration to other platforms, among others. Likewise, 70%, but among parents, report that their teenagers under 16 continue to use social media.
Also relevant is the fact that the majority of adolescents reported that the social media ban did not make them feel safer, and approximately 1 in 7 young people feel even more at risk than before. Such data are somewhat consistent with the responses of a significant portion of parents in other recent surveys as well: a quarter of parents observe adolescents migrating to alternative or less regulated platforms, as well as a reduction in social connection, a decline in creativity, and an increase in inequality.
Although a third of parents do notice some positive aspects such as an improved family relationship and more in-person interactions, an overwhelming majority of adults did not trust that the ban was working (58%), and fewer than a third responded that they would contribute within their families to enforcing the ban.
The available data therefore suggest a predictable provisional conclusion: the ban has not produced an improvement in mental health, has not even managed to stop access to social media, but is already generating documentable adverse effects: migration to other digital environments, circumvention of the rules, a false sense of security, and a potential global epidemic of simplistic and wrong questions and answers contrary to the available science.
European Union: the (mini?) directions of the European digital identity wallet
At the level of European Union member states, the dominant trend is copied to the letter from the Australian model: a host of countries are at different stages of proposing various bans (14, 15, or 16 years of age) for social media, and the European Parliament has called, through a non-binding resolution, for a minimum digital age of 16 across the entire Union. What the European Commission adds is the technical instrument through which age verification would be carried out: the European age verification app (or a mini Digital Identity Wallet), a solution announced last week as “technically ready” by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
The app is based on Zero-Knowledge Proof technology, a method by which a user can prove they possess a certain property (in this case, that they exceed a certain age) without revealing any other information. Concretely, a passport or identity document is uploaded once into the app, which generates an age attestation. When a webpage requests verification, the app sends the platform a simple age “yes/no,” with no name, no date of birth, no photograph, no other details.
The solution is open-source, built on the same technical specifications as the European Digital Identity Wallet (EUDI Wallet) provided for by the eIDAS 2.0 Regulation, and can be adapted by member states to national needs without modifying the privacy protection mechanisms. Age verification takes place entirely on the user’s device, with no communication with external servers at the time of proof presentation, and each attestation is single-use, to prevent cross-platform tracking.
The app is being piloted by a group of seven member states: France, Denmark, Greece, Italy, Spain, Cyprus, and Ireland, and in practice, integration is done through already existing national Digital Wallets: in Italy through the IO app (the IT Wallet section), in France through France Identité, in Denmark through MitID, in Greece through the Gov.gr Wallet, in Spain through Cartera Digital. At least in theory, other member states and private sector actors will be offered integration support throughout 2026, with the objective of making the solution available at a pan-European level by the full launch of the Digital Identity Wallet in all EU member states, which is expected to take place at the end of this year.
At this point, the main unknown is whether the European Commission will continue with the launch of the app and the legal framework following the Australian steps in the spirit of a ban for a certain age on social media, or whether the app will be used primarily for services or goods prohibited to minors (alcohol, tobacco, gambling, pornography, etc.), or whether the threat of the app will be used more as a bargaining chip between the interests of the European Union and those of the US, China, or the associated corporations.
The concerns are all the more well-founded given that a host of objections and evidence of non-compliance with the highest security standards began to dominate media discourse less than a day after the technical launch: on April 16, 2026, it was demonstrated that the app can be compromised in two minutes by bypassing all protections.
Estonia alongside the scientific community: the most justified international dissent
Estonia‘s Minister of Education and Research, Kristina Kallas, has been the most vocal critic of the quasi-prohibitive consensus on bans at the EU level, arguing that “children will very quickly find ways to circumvent the bans and continue using social media,” while the Minister of Justice and Digital Affairs, Liisa Pakosta, added that “Estonia believes in an information society and in the inclusion of young people in the information society.”
These official positions of the Estonian state are all the more significant given that Estonia is among the most digitally advanced countries in the world and a global voice on the matter: Estonia has integrated digital education into the school curriculum from the age of 7, and the internet usage rate exceeds 91% of the population. In essence, literacy, responsible use, and understanding of the digital environment (and of artificial intelligence) are essential civic skills that must be continuously updated, and bans have no place in this approach.
Estonia’s position gains considerable weight when placed alongside the open letter signed by 438 researchers and scientists in the field of security and privacy from 32 countries, which systematically critiques the banning of adolescents from social media as well as the risky age verification solutions. The main arguments are precisely that circumventing restrictions is easy regardless, alongside migration to more dangerous digital spaces, and that young people will be excluded, discriminated against, and negatively affected by anti-scientific measures.
One of the spaces where these debates will materialize is the Digital Fairness Act, expected in the last quarter of 2026. Estonia has a legislative window in which it can argue for an alternative framework of platform accountability, significant Union-level investments in literacy, education & inclusion, and addressing the real problems faced by young people, in exchange for abandoning age-based access restrictions. The real stakes are precisely the model Europe chooses for its younger generations, and the recent chorus of warnings, evidence, theory, and practice tilts especially toward complex and comprehensive alternatives rather than wrong and simplistic solutions.
Romania (still, and again) lagging behind. Romanians — nuanced and critical opinions.
As analyzed in the previous part (II) of this newsletter, Romania continues to persist in trying to solve cross-cutting, digital and physical problems with last century’s solutions — namely paperwork and bureaucracy.
The two legislative projects currently in the decision-making chamber of Parliament (PL-x 356/2025 on digital age of consent at 16 and PL-x 385/2025 on harmful content). In short, they propose the identification through identity documents of every internet user in Romania in order to establish their age, and the submission of a file to ANCOM by an adult for every person under 16.
The projects have been harshly criticized both by the Association for Technology and Internet (ApTI) and by the more than 50 institutions that issued opinions during the parliamentary process — for the technical inability to develop age verification systems correlated with Romania’s databases, the impossibility for ANCOM to manage the millions of parental consent files, and the risk of disadvantaging minors by blocking access to educational materials. Furthermore, the European Commission has officially warned Romania that the two proposals overlap with European regulations and risk an infringement procedure.
The Australian data analyzed in this article confirm, point by point, the criticisms formulated by Romanian specialists: bans are trivially circumvented, migration to unregulated platforms amplifies risks, and age verification at scale generates privacy problems without improving children’s safety. If Australia, with incomparably superior resources, is facing these failures, Romania’s proposal to process paper files at ANCOM is also contrary to the international lessons already available.
Alongside the two legislative projects already in the decision-making chamber, a third bill was submitted to the Senate in March 2026 (L260/2026) on electronic age verification for age-restricted products and services in the online environment. Unlike the two previous projects, this initiative targets exclusively products and services already prohibited to minors by law — alcohol, tobacco, gambling, pyrotechnics — and aims to replace the simple self-declaration of the “I am over 18” type with real electronic age verification, aligned with the European blueprint and the EUDI Wallet. The bill obliges the Ministry of Internal Affairs to organize a national verification infrastructure, free for merchants, based on data minimization principles and technological neutrality.
Nevertheless, this project too received an unfavorable opinion from the Economic and Social Council, which identified significant compatibility problems with the Digital Services Act — including the risk of fragmenting the single digital market, the transformation of marketplace platforms from intermediaries into co-responsible parties for transactions, contrary to Art. 6 DSA, and the vulnerability of a centralized verification system to cyberattacks. The ESC also flagged the risk of infringement through non-compliance with the notification obligation provided for by Directive (EU) 2015/1535, as well as the unclear relationship between this mechanism and the future EUDI Wallet ecosystem currently under development.
Also worth noting is that Romanians recognize the complexity of the problem. The new AtlasIntel survey, conducted at the request of Edge Institute, shows a nuanced and critical public opinion, far from the consensus that some decision-makers invoke to justify the bans. The most frequent response (a plurality of 35% of respondents) does not consider banning social networks necessary, but rather allowing access to a version adapted for children. One third support a ban under 16, a quarter under 14, and 8% do not believe any restrictions should be imposed. And the main effect of the ban anticipated by respondents is a negative one: the migration of children to hidden, more dangerous networks (31%) — exactly what is already happening in Australia.
Also relevant is the fact that 44% of Romanians consider parents primarily responsible regarding children’s access to social media, 38% place the responsibility on the state, and only 8% on the social media platforms themselves. It is an indicator that Romanians do not yet identify the real source of the problem where the international scientific community identifies it: in the design and commercial practices of the platforms.
We also find ourselves at an impasse regarding the pace of adoption of the electronic identity card (considerably less than a quarter of the country’s population), similar to the impasse we face in developing the European Digital Identity Wallet (whose deadline is by the end of this year). We have not requested and are not part of the group of countries testing the European age verification app, we have not contributed to identifying problems or solutions in the pan-European and global discussion on social media or the well-being of children and adolescents, and we have no relevant opinion as a state to bring to a subject that inevitably concerns our country as well.
In our reports and alongside our partners such as those at Smart Everything Everywhere (SEE) through their Digital Safe, Future Ready campaign, we inject political, public, and media discourse with the directions, solutions, and necessities that Romania must take, implement, and address. For the moment, we are in the offside position of the European and international community and still stuck in the paper-file reflex. In this context, one of the main solutions for Romania to exit this position is precisely the acceleration of digital technologies that can empower citizens in Romania to better control their data, documents, and identity in both the physical and digital world, namely the European Digital Identity Wallet, which will also include an age verification component.
Until the definitive resolution of the experiments currently underway in Australia and other countries, as well as until the finalization of the European Commission’s directions and the completion of the pilot projects in the European pioneer states with regard to the age verification app, Romania must have a digital infrastructure prepared not only for the eventual age verification (for example, for products and services prohibited to minors under 18), but also for easing the lives and managing the digital identity of all citizens.