When Lewis’s Caroll’s Alice followed a white rabbit with pink eyes, checking his pocket watch, she fell into a rabbit hole and entered into Wonderland – a strange and absurd alternative universe in which the rules are not those of our world. The concept of the „down the rabbit hole“ nowadays is commonly used as a metaphor for losing track of time and distraction.

It is no secret that the whole concept and design of social media kind of resembles a rabbit hole in which one can spend hours and hours of scrolling through the infinite feed full of captivating, fascinating and adsorbing content. However, despite looking like a safe-spend time for children other than engaging in possible dangerous for their physical health outside play, the excessive time on social media can cause much worse mental health problems.

A recent study conducted by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre examined the connection between the excessive use of social media amongst young people and the degradation of their emotional states. The study suggests that 19% of the respondents aged 30 or younger feel lonely most of the time, whereas only 12% of the respondents aged 31 and older share this feeling.

This being said, the European Commission has demonstrated an intention to tackle the problem of the „rabbit-hole“ effect especially focusing on children.

Below you can find a summary of the future initiatives we can expect of EU level from 2025 and beyond:

EU-wide inquiry on the broader impacts of social media on well-being: In the Political Guidelines 2024-2029 the European Commission has demonstrated a firm intention to tackle the emerging mental and health problems stemming from the excessive use of social media by children and young people. The EU plans to launch an EU-wide inquiry on the broader impacts of social media on well-being.

Guidelines assisting Art. 28 from the Digital Services Act (DSA): The European Commission launched a call for evidence to gather feedback for its upcoming guidelines on protection of minors online, which, once adopted, will advise on how online platforms are to implement high levels of privacy, safety and security for minors online, as required by the DSA.

The Commission is proposing that the platforms that are accessible to children should regularly conduct a child specific impact assessment around the „5C“ topology of risks to minors: content, conduct, contact, consumers, cross-cutting risks.

The Commission will use stakeholders’ input to draft the guidelines and conduct a separate consultation on the draft guidelines, which are planned to be adopted before summer 2025.

Age-verification: The Commission is developing a short-term, privacy preserving solution for age verification for use in certain high-risk scenarios to shield minors from age-inappropriate content. The solution will be based on the EU Digital Identity Wallet framework and in expected to be deployed deployed by Member States in 2025.

Decisions on formal proceedings under the Digital Services Act (DSA): The Commission has expressed its concerns over the algorithms which can create the „rabbit-hole“ effect and stimulate behavioral addictions in children. In this regard, formal proceedings under the DSA have been initiated against TikTok and Facebook and Instagram for a possible breach in the areas of children protection and risk assessment.  If the Commission finds that the investigated companies are non-compliant, it will take appropriate measures. An example of DSA’s capacity to address addictive design is TikTok’s commitment to permanently withdraw the Lite Rewards programme from the EU.

Sources:

DHOMBRES, B., KOVACIC, M., SCHNEPF, S.V. and BLASKÓ, Z., Loneliness and social media use in the European Union, European Commission, 2024, JRC135806.