European Economic and Social Committee Calls for Platform Accountability to Tackle Cyberbullying

The European Economic and Social Committee on October 2, 2026, issued a new opinion declaring that responsibility for preventing cyberbullying must rest primarily with digital platforms rather than with children and young people, calling for stronger platform accountability, straightforward reporting procedures and meaningful youth participation in the fight against harmful online behaviour. The opinion notes that around one in six children aged 11 to 15 in Europe report having experienced cyberbullying, while approximately one in eight admit to having cyberbullied others, and warns that some platform design features can influence users' behaviour in ways that are not always transparent, arguing that regulatory measures should focus on the companies providing widely available products rather than on young people using them.

Shifting the operational burden from the child to the platform is the principle Guardii is built on. The platform's anti-cyberbullying detection module monitors direct-message conversations in real time across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord and Roblox, identifying sustained targeting, escalation and coercion as patterns emerge, and blocks or flags hostile contact before it reaches the target. Rather than requiring a child to recognise abuse, report it through a complex procedure, and wait for a platform response, Guardii surfaces the child in crisis to a parent, school or professional the moment a harmful pattern is detected, placing the detection responsibility on the AI system and the intervention responsibility on a trusted adult or authority, not on the young person experiencing the harm.