Brief for the Hearing at the European Parliament on DSA Enforcement and the Protection of Minors

Prepared for a European Parliament hearing on DSA enforcement and minors' protection organised by the EPP and Renew groups, this brief responds to a moment of rising political pressure on the issue: Parliament had urged the Commission to use its full DSA powers, including fines and bans, against sites endangering minors, and the Commission had just preliminarily found TikTok in breach of the DSA over addictive design.

Panoptykon and partner civil-society groups matched claims made by TikTok, Meta and YouTube in their 2025 risk-assessment reports about mitigating excessive or addictive platform use against independent research and investigations. Across the board, the brief finds that while platforms list mitigation measures such as screentime prompts and break reminders, none disclose the quantitative or qualitative data needed to show those measures are effective, despite mounting scientific evidence of harm to young users.

Its argument is that the burden of proof should now sit with the platforms: absent data demonstrating their declared safeguards work, the brief argues the Commission and Parliament should treat the mitigation claims made in VLOPs' DSA risk assessments with the same scrutiny as any other unverified compliance claim.