Commission investigates Snapchat’s compliance with child protection rules under the Digital Services Act

This article is brought to you in association with the European Commission.

The European Commission has opened formal proceedings to investigate if Snapchat is ensuring a high level of safety, privacy and security for children online, in compliance with the Digital Services Act (DSA).

Snapchat may have breached the DSA by exposing minors to grooming attempts and recruitment for criminal purposes, as well as to information about the sale of illegal goods, like drugs, or age-restricted products, such as vapes and alcohol.

The investigation will focus on five areas.

Age assurance

According to Snapchat’s own Terms and conditions, users must be at least 13 years old to use the platform. The Commission suspects that Snapchat’s reliance on self-declaration as an age assurance measure is insufficient. It neither prevents children under the age of 13 from accessing the service, nor adequately assesses whether users are younger than 17 years old, which is necessary to ensure an age-appropriate experience. Moreover, the Commission suspects that the tool for users to report to Snapchat the presence of minors under the age of 13 on its service is not available to users on the app.

Grooming and recruitment of minors for criminal activities

The Commission suspects that Snapchat is not adequately protecting minors from being contacted by users with harmful intent, such as sexual exploitation or recruitment for criminal activities. By allowing their services to be misused by adults who, by not disclosing their real age at registration or by altering it afterwards, are pretending to be minors, Snapchat may not be implementing sufficient safeguards to protect children from exposure to harmful content, contact, conduct, and other risks.

Inadequate default account settings

The Commission suspects that Snapchat’s default settings do not provide sufficient privacy, safety, and security protections for minors. For example, children and teens are automatically recommended to other users through the ‘Find Friends’ system, and push notifications remain enabled by default. Additionally, when creating an account, users are not offered adequate guidance on privacy and safety features, nor given an explanation of how to adjust account settings.

Dissemination of information on the sale of prohibited products

Under the DSA, online platforms must mitigate systemic risks stemming from their service. The Commission suspects that Snapchat is in breach of this obligation. For example, its content moderation tools do not seem to be effective in preventing the spread of information pointing users to the sale of illegal products, such as drugs, or age-restricted items, including vapes and alcohol. Moreover, the platform does not seem to effectively prevent users, including children and teens, from accessing such content.

Reporting of illegal content

The Commission suspects that the mechanisms currently in place to notify illegal content are neither easy to access nor user-friendly and may use so-called dark patterns in their design. In addition, the Commission suspects that Snapchat fails to inform users about the possibilities for redress, including through Snapchat’s internal complaint handling system.

Next steps

The Commission will now carry out an in-depth investigation. This involves gathering further evidence, for example by sending requests for information to Snapchat and conducting interviews or inspections.

The opening of formal proceedings empowers the Commission to take further enforcement steps, such as adopting interim measures and a non-compliance decision. The Commission is also empowered to accept commitments from Snapchat to remedy issue raised in the proceedings.

Today’s opening of formal proceedings means that the Commission takes charge of the investigation that the Dutch Digital Service Coordinator (DSC), Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM), launched on 9 September 2025 into the sales of vapes to minors on Snapchat. ACM will be associated to the Commission’s investigation and will continue to support it.

Background

The Commission used the 2025 DSA Guidelines on the protection of minors as a benchmark to evaluate platforms’ compliance with the obligation to ensure a high level of privacy, safety and security for minors. The Guidelines set out that self-declaration should not be considered as a reliable age assurance measure; minors should not be easily detectable by adults nor be recommended adults as contact suggestions, and children’s default settings and interface design should be set to the highest available level of protection. 

The Commission’s opening of an investigation is based on the analysis of Snapchat’s risk assessment reports from 2023, 2024 and 2025, as well as on the replies to the request for information sent on 10 October 2025. This request sought details on Snapchat’s age verification system, as well as on the measures to prevent users from accessing illegal products, including drugs, and minors from accessing age-restricted products, such as vapes.

The Commission has taken into account the information gathered by ACM in its investigation of Snapchat’s compliance with the DSA with regard to the sale of vapes to minors in the Netherlands as well as information provided by the Federal Network Agency for Electricity, Gas, Telecommunications, Post and Railways (BNetzA), the DSC for Germany. The Commission also received input from academic researchers, civil society organisations and other public authorities.

Under the DSA, citizens have the right to make a complaint about a breach of the DSA to the Digital Services Coordinator of their Member State. The Commission has also put in place a whistleblower tool, allowing employees and other people with knowledge to contact the Commission in an anonymous way to contribute to the Commission’s monitoring of compliance by designated VLOPs/VLOSEs.