EU KIDS Act: Europe's plan to strengthen child online safety
Guardii Analysis
On 17 September 2026, the European Commission published its proposal for the EU KIDS Act, Keeping Internet Digital Spaces Accountable and Trustworthy, a comprehensive regulatory framework that reverses the burden of proof by requiring services to demonstrate they are safe before children can access them. The proposal follows the Digital Services Act and EU AI Act, establishing a duty of care framework where providers must prove their risk assessments and safety measures are adequate rather than waiting for harm to occur, covering social media, streaming services, online games, online retailers and AI products.
Rather than waiting for abuse to occur and then reacting with access controls, the anti-grooming and anti-sextortion detection modules developed by Guardii, a Meta Business Partner, intercept hostile contact at the point it enters a child's direct messages on platforms including Instagram, Snapchat, Discord and Roblox. The technology surfaces patterns of sustained targeting, escalation and coercion in real time, enabling rapid escalation to parents, schools or law enforcement in an emergency without requiring the platform itself to first prove compliance or complete a lengthy risk assessment, addressing the underlying threat behaviour rather than the regulatory status of the space in which it occurs.