European Commission calls for mandated age assurance for social media

The European Commission's child safety panel has published a 150-page report recommending mandatory age assurance systems for social media across the EU, with a focus on privacy-preserving methods like zero-knowledge proofs and strengthened cross-regulator enforcement. The recommendations follow a Eurobarometer survey showing over 60% of Europeans support age checks on social platforms. If you sell age assurance tech to platforms, the EU just mandated your entire market into existence across 27 countries – but only if your method meets privacy-by-design standards that rule out most document-scanning approaches. Zero-knowledge proofs and similar privacy-tech vendors now have a regulatory tailwind, but platforms need solutions live within months, not years.