Brussels has child safety cases open against Snapchat, Meta and TikTok, but not YouTube or the app stores

The European Commission has three child safety cases running under the Digital Services Act. Snapchat is under formal investigation. Meta and TikTok have been told they are preliminarily in breach. None of the three has reached a decision, and no public step has been taken against YouTube, the Apple App Store or Google Play.

The Commission adopted guidelines on the protection of minors in July 2025. On 10 October 2025, according to its announcement on the Shaping Europe's Digital Future site, it sent requests for information to Snapchat, YouTube, the Apple App Store and Google Play, and called this the first investigatory step following those guidelines. A request for information is not a formal proceeding and carries no penalty in itself.

The questions differed by company. The Commission asked Snapchat how it stops children under 13 opening accounts and how it prevents minors being sold vapes and drugs. It asked YouTube about its age assurance systems and about its recommender system, following reports of harmful material reaching minors. It asked Apple and Google how they manage the risk of minors downloading illegal or harmful apps, including gambling apps and tools for generating sexualised images, and how age ratings are applied.

Snapchat was escalated first. On 26 March 2026 the Commission opened formal proceedings, according to its own announcement. It said it would examine whether Snapchat exposes minors to grooming and to recruitment for criminal purposes, and to material about the sale of drugs and age-restricted goods such as vapes and alcohol. It said it suspects reliance on self-declared age is not sufficient to keep under-13s off the service, and named design features including Find Friends and default push notifications. The Commission took over an investigation into vape sales that the Dutch regulator, the Authority for Consumers and Markets, had opened on 9 September 2025.

Meta came next. On 29 April 2026 the Commission issued preliminary findings that Instagram and Facebook had failed to identify, assess and mitigate the risk of under-13s using the services. The Commission said a child who enters a false date of birth at sign-up faces no effective check, and that Meta's tool for reporting suspected underage users is difficult to use. It cited evidence that roughly 10 to 12 per cent of under-13s across the EU access Instagram or Facebook.

TikTok followed in July. On 24 July 2026 the Commission sent TikTok preliminary findings that minors' accounts do not meet the standard the DSA requires, according to its announcement. The objection is that minors can set accounts to public, exposing their content to anyone, and allowing content posted by 16 and 17 year olds to be recommended through the For You feed. The Commission's preliminary view is that such accounts should default to visibility only for contacts the minor has accepted.

Preliminary findings are not a verdict. Only if the Commission adopts a non-compliance decision does the DSA's headline penalty apply, and that is up to 6 per cent of a company's total global annual turnover. No such decision has been adopted in any of these cases.

The app stores and YouTube sit outside that sequence. No formal proceeding on protection of minors has been publicly announced against Apple's App Store, Google Play or YouTube.

The Commission's technical answer has moved faster than its enforcement. It published the first version of a white-label age verification blueprint on 14 July 2025, naming Denmark, France, Greece, Italy and Spain as the first member states to take it up in national wallets or apps. A second, enhanced version has since been released, the front-runner group has grown to include Cyprus and Ireland, and the Commission is pressing member states to deploy national solutions during 2026.

The political answer is still being written. In November 2025 the European Parliament adopted a non-binding resolution on protecting minors online, by 483 votes to 92 with 86 abstentions according to its press service, calling for a harmonised digital minimum age of 16 for social media, video sharing platforms and AI companions, with 13 as the floor even with parental consent. A special panel on child safety online convened by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen reported on 13 July 2026 that providers should be kept away from under-13s until they can demonstrate their services are safe by design. Von der Leyen said the same day that she favoured phased and gradual access by age band and that proposals would go to member states after the summer, as reported by Euronews.

Separately, Parliament and Council reached political agreement on 22 June 2026 on the recast directive on child sexual abuse, which the Commission says covers AI-generated material, the livestreaming of abuse and the sexual extortion of children. Parliament had adopted its negotiating position in June 2025. The text still requires formal adoption and then transposition by member states.

What remains unresolved is whether any of this produces a penalty. Three cases are open and none has reached a decision, the app stores have not been escalated, and the Commission's promised legislative proposal on a minimum age had not been published as at 15 August 2026.