The Copenhagen government and several child protection groups have formed a new alliance to take on social media platforms.
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The Danish government announced on Monday that it had signed a new agreement with Danish youth organisations to protect EU children from the addictive design of social media and the business models of tech giants.
The coalition, which includes Save the Children, Borns Wilker and the Danish Youth Council, wants to fight back against features such as infinite scrolling, autoplay and continuous play designed to keep users on the platform, as well as algorithms that expose children and young people to disturbing and borderline offensive content.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said the alliance was established to support and prioritize the interests of children.
“We're dealing with very large, very powerful large tech companies that have so far chosen not to exercise their responsibility towards children,” Frederiksen explained in an interview on Monday.
Some kids admit to being addicted: “There were days when I was on my phone for 11 hours, and about nine of those hours were on TikTok,” one teenager said.
The Prime Minister criticised the tech industry for failing to implement effective age restrictions and remove harmful content.
Johanne Schmidt Nielsen, executive director of Save the Children, believes age verification is paramount.
“We need actual age verification. We need age-appropriate content requirements,” Schmidt-Nielsen said.
“It makes no sense for a 12-year-old to be watching content that even adults shouldn't be watching. They need to reach out to adults.”
To address this issue, Kristin Lång Lund, chair of the Danish Youth Council, said the solution was to “strike a better balance between the physical and the digital in the normal lives of children and young people.”
Danish ministries of business, culture and digitalisation are all expected to join the effort.
