The European Fee (EC) has preliminarily discovered that TikTok’s addictive design options violate the bloc’s Digital Providers Act (DSA).
The preliminary resolution outlines how addictive design options on the platform, equivalent to infinite scroll and autoplay, are leading to customers going into “autopilot mode”, with the EC stating this will result in “compulsive use”.
The DSA, which units out guidelines for on-line companies utilized by European residents, is designed to strengthen shopper rights and shopper alternative, whereas additionally minimising the chance of hurt. The act additionally requires platforms to hold out a danger evaluation of destructive results on kids’s psychological well being and current it to the EC.
TikTok is without doubt one of the 17 firms outlined as Very Massive On-line Platforms below the act, which implies it has to adjust to probably the most stringent guidelines of the DSA as a result of the scale of its person base means there’s better potential for systemic harms to happen.
In its ruling, the EC said that TikTok had didn’t implement affordable and efficient measures to mitigate dangers from its addictive design options, arguing that minors and weak adults are at explicit danger of hurt.
The EC’s investigation additionally revealed that TikTok’s danger evaluation had not adequately addressed how its design options and darkish patterns may trigger hurt to the bodily and psychological well being of its customers.
On the protecting measures which are in place, together with display time administration and parental management instruments, the EC famous they “don’t appear to successfully scale back the dangers stemming from TikTok’s addictive design” resulting from being simple to dismiss or overlook.
“At this stage, the Fee considers that TikTok wants to alter the essential design of its service. As an example, by disabling key addictive options equivalent to ‘infinite scroll’ over time, implementing efficient ‘display time breaks’, together with in the course of the evening, and adapting its recommender system,” it mentioned.
European Union (EU) tech chief Henna Vikkunen informed reporters that minors are extra in danger as a result of “they don’t have the identical instruments” to keep away from compulsive behaviour.
The choice may drive the app, which has a couple of billion customers globally, to make design adjustments to keep away from penalties, the European Fee mentioned.
If it fails to make the mandatory adjustments, the app may face fines of as much as 6% of annual income, which it reportedly hoped may attain $186bn final 12 months. TikTok was additionally accused of breaking digital promoting guidelines over transparency in Could 2025.
The ruling marks the primary time the EC has taken a authorized stance on the design options of a social media firm, tackling what many on-line security advocates and campaigners recognise as addictive design.
Responding to the EC’s preliminary findings, a TikTok spokesperson mentioned they “current a categorically false and fully meritless depiction of our platform, and we’ll take no matter steps are essential to problem these findings by way of each means out there to us”.
Nevertheless, many hope this might set a precedent for future motion in opposition to recommender programs that amplify allegedly dangerous and unlawful content material. In December, the first-ever fantastic for breaching the DSA was given to X, with a complete of £104m.
These findings verify what folks have been saying for years: TikTok’s addictive design isn’t an accident, it’s a enterprise mannequin Ava Lee, Individuals vs Large Tech
“These findings verify what folks have been saying for years: TikTok’s addictive design isn’t an accident, it’s a enterprise mannequin. We’d like [EC president] Ursula von der Leyen to face up for European residents and present the political management this second requires,” mentioned Ava Lee, government director of Individuals vs Large Tech.
US states have already pursued a case in opposition to TikTok for its addictive design options, with the lawsuit alleging the product is damaging kids’s psychological well being.
The transfer by the EC comes at a time when considerations across the security of social media platforms are rising throughout the continent.
France, for instance, has voted on a social media ban for youngsters below the age of 15, whereas Spain has proposed to criminalise algorithms that amplify unlawful content material. In his speech to the World Governance Summit in Dubai, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez vowed to guard kids “from the Digital Wild West”.
In January 2026, the UK’s Home of Lords voted to again a social media ban for under-16s by 261 votes to 150, with the federal government launching a nationwide session to debate subsequent steps for on-line security and digital well-being.
Von der Leyen has expressed assist for an EU-wide age restrict, following Australia being the primary nation on the planet to ban under-16s from accessing social media in December final 12 months.
“Amidst present discussions of restrictions on kids’s entry to social media platforms, governments should keep in mind in addition they have an obligation to guard kids’s proper to take part within the digital world,” mentioned Lisa Dittmer, Amnesty Worldwide researcher on kids and younger folks’s digital rights.
“To take action, their focus have to be on tackling the poisonous design of main social media platforms, together with by way of successfully implementing legal guidelines just like the Digital Providers Act,” she added.
Analysis by Amnesty Worldwide has beforehand discovered that regardless of danger mitigation measures introduced by TikTok since 2024, the platform continues to reveal weak customers to content material that normalises self-harm, despair and suicidal ideation.
The European Fee’s announcement of its preliminary findings comes simply days after a report was printed by the US authorities’s Home Judiciary Committee, titled The overseas censorship menace, Half II: Europe’s decade-long marketing campaign to censor the worldwide web and the way it harms American speech in america.
The publication states that the European Fee has “pressured main social media platforms to alter their world content material moderation guidelines”, revealing rising discontent from the Trump administration in direction of EU tech regulation.
“For the primary time, the European Fee is critically inspecting the recommender mechanisms by way of which platform operators manipulate the free alternative of customers,” mentioned German MEP Alexandra Geese.
“Coupled with excessive personalisation, this method distorts the concept of freedom on-line. I count on these recommender mechanisms to be scrutinised on different platforms, too. There are higher algorithms for guaranteeing alternative on-line. It’s not the customers who need disinformation, hate and violence, however the platforms.”
