News: Member states failed to make a unanimous decision regarding age limit.
Just a day after EU policy makers considered introducing a new law to increase the age limit for social media use, the EU has allowed member states set their own age limits.
The EU has allowed member states to set their own age limit after failing to arrive at a consensus on the proposed rule.
The regulators were planning to ban services from processing personal data that belonged to users under the age of 16 without their parents consent.
Since the majority of social media channels need some amount of user information to offer services it would have prevented the companies from offering their services to teens.
The new law was proposed as a last minute amendment to the new data protection regulations. It was proposed by some states urging the regulators to raise the age limit to 16.
The proposals were given as part of data protection package which includes two draft laws – a regulation and a directive.
EU said that the draft regulation aims to give citizens control over their private data, while also creating clarity and legal certainty for businesses to spur competition in the digital market.
EU Parliament’s lead MEP on the regulation, Jan Philipp Albrecht (Greens, DE), said: "The regulation returns control over citizens’ personal data to citizens.
"Companies will not be allowed to divulge information that they have received for a particular purpose without the permission of the person concerned.
"Consumers will have to give their consent by a clear and affirmative action to the use of their data.
"Unfortunately, member states could not agree to set a 13-year age limit for parental consent for children to use social media such as Facebook or Instagram. Instead, member states will now be free to set their own limits between 13 and 16 years."
