LONDON, Sept 19, 2026 — Two regulatory moves this week — China’s draft minors’-internet rules published Friday and the European Commission’s Child Safety Act proposal unveiled Sept. 17 — have pushed children’s digital rights back to the centre of global policy debate.
China’s Cyberspace Administration released the Regulations on the Protection of Minors in Cyberspace (Draft for Comments) on Sept. 18, open for public feedback until Oct. 17. The draft bars minors from stranger-to-stranger social networking and virtual intimate relationship services such as virtual relatives or virtual companions, prohibits live-streaming for under-16s, and requires platforms to avoid algorithm designs that induce emotional dependence, addiction or excessive spending.
In the European Union, the Commission proposed a tiered regime: no social media for under-13s, “mini-accounts” supervised by parents for 13–15s, and independent accounts only from age 15. The proposal would extend to social platforms, video services, online games and AI chatbots, and shift the burden to platforms to prove their services are safe for children.
Amnesty International, whose children’s digital-rights team — including Hannah Storey, Head of Children and Young People’s Digital Rights — has long argued against blunt bans, says child-safety policy must protect without excluding. Storey warned earlier in 2026 that social-media bans “fail to reflect the complex reality of children’s needs online” and risk pushing children out of spaces that also provide education, community and activism.
Rights groups broadly welcome stronger duties on platforms, but warn that age-verification and blanket restrictions can threaten privacy, freedom of expression and young people’s participation. A coalition of civil-society groups that pressed the European Commission this month called for safety-by-design, independent risk assessments and child participation — not only age gates.
Analysts say the 2026 trend is clear: governments are moving from voluntary platform self-regulation toward hard defaults — minor modes, age tiers, algorithm limits, platform liability. The unresolved question is whether those safeguards protect children or simply move harm, surveillance and exclusion elsewhere.