Protecting young people on social media: Federal Council imposes stricter obligations on platforms | HÄRTING Rechtsanwälte

Endless scrolling, personalised adverts, contact requests from strangers: protecting young people on social media involves more than just problematic content. The Federal Council intends to amend the proposed Swiss Platform Act (KomPG) to include obligations to protect minors. The focus is on the risks posed by these services and a ban on targeted advertising. To what extent will platforms have to alter their services to comply? We set the record straight.

27. October 2026

Federal Council expands the scope of the proposed Platform Act

On 14 October 2026, the Federal Council took note of the results of the consultation on the new Federal Act on Communication Platforms and Search Engines (KomPG). In doing so, it decided to expand the scope of the originally proposed regulation, particularly in the area of the protection of children and young people. The Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC) has been tasked with drafting a corresponding message by the end of June 2027.

We have already outlined the key features of the KomPG in our article ‘Greater transparency for digital platforms: An overview of the new Swiss Platform Act’. The bill is now to be supplemented with binding obligations regarding the protection of young people. The focus is on the risks posed by the services to minors and the use of their data for advertising. The consultation process provided the impetus for these additions. However, a fully drafted bill on the new obligations regarding the protection of minors is not yet available.

Protecting minors becomes a duty for platform operators

The most significant change concerns the protection of children and young people on major communication platforms and search engines. According to the key provisions adopted on 14 October 2026, affected providers will in future be obliged to systematically assess risks to minors and take appropriate measures to mitigate them.

Article 20 of the preliminary draft already requires an annual assessment of systemic risks. Under the new provisions, risks to minors are to be explicitly investigated and reduced through appropriate measures. A risk report alone would therefore no longer suffice for the protection of minors. This shifts the focus to the design of the services: what content does an algorithm recommend to young people? Which features encourage excessive use? Who is permitted to contact minors? Possible approaches include safer default settings, tailored recommendation systems or restrictions on unwanted contact. It remains to be seen what measures the Swiss draft legislation will require.

However, the Federal Council has not yet decided on a general statutory minimum age for the use of social networks. Whether additional measures such as age limits are necessary will be decided on the basis of further investigations.

No profiling-based advertising for minors

The Federal Council intends to prohibit the providers covered by the bill from displaying advertising to minors based on profiling. This would apply, for example, to advertising selected on the basis of automatically analysed interests or usage habits. The key difference is that advertising profiles of minors will no longer be permitted to be used for this purpose.

According to the key parameters communicated so far, not all advertising aimed at minors is to be banned. Rather, the ban is intended to apply to personalised advertising based on profiling. Context-based advertising – selected, for example, on the basis of the content of a page currently being viewed rather than on the basis of a personal behavioural profile – would, in principle, not be covered by this specific ban.

How does a platform recognise that it is dealing with minors? This question is central to the implementation of the ban. Age verification via identity documents or biometric features may create additional data protection risks. Articles 6 and 7 of the Data Protection Act (DSG) therefore also require proportionality and a design that complies with data protection principles in this regard. It must be clarified what age-related information is actually required and how to prevent more data than necessary from being collected for the purpose of protecting minors.

Illegal content: The reporting procedure is being extended

The Federal Council intends to extend the reporting procedure to cover all content suspected of being unlawful. This is particularly relevant for minors where publications infringe their personal rights without constituting any of the criminal offences explicitly covered to date. However, not all content that is problematic for young people is unlawful. A distressing depiction or a risky trend may be legally permissible yet still pose a risk to minors. This is where the announced obligations regarding risk assessment and mitigation come into play as an additional approach.

Furthermore, a report does not automatically lead to deletion. The platform must review the content and decide on any measures to be taken. For the protection of minors, it will therefore also be crucial whether minors understand the procedures and are actually able to use them.

The protection of minors must not exclude young people from public discourse

Minors, too, have a right to freedom of expression and access to information. Protective measures must therefore take into account that young people also use platforms for political information, exchange of views and social participation. Blanket restrictions may impair this use. The Federal Council explicitly cites participation in public discourse as an objective of its youth protection measures.

With regard to moderation, there is a further concern: out of fear of sanctions, platforms might remove lawful content as a precautionary measure. This risk, known as ‘overblocking’, argues in favour of transparent decisions and effective appeal mechanisms. For minors, such procedures must also be understandable and accessible.

Protection of minors in the EU DSA: a model with an open-ended age requirement

The EU DSA already contains a corresponding provision: Article 28(2) prohibits online platforms from using profiling for advertising purposes by utilising a user’s personal data if they have reasonable certainty that the user is a minor. At the same time, paragraph 3 makes it clear that, in order to fulfil the obligations under this article, no additional personal data need be processed for the purpose of age verification. It remains to be seen how Switzerland will regulate the balance between an effective advertising ban and age verification that minimises data processing. The Swiss extension is to remain limited to very large services; smaller providers will therefore remain outside the scope of the new KomPG obligations.

What should companies be bearing in mind right now?

For platform and search engine providers covered by the legislation, the key question is which functions pose risks to minors and how these risks can be mitigated. Existing DSA processes can serve as a starting point for this. Whether they meet future Swiss requirements will need to be assessed against the revised draft bill.

Advertisers and agencies should, in particular, check which campaigns are based on individual profiles and which are context-based. Whilst they are not, in principle, directly subject to the KomPG, changes to the platforms’ advertising systems could affect their ability to target specific audiences.

It remains to be seen how breaches of the additional youth protection obligations will be penalised. The current maximum fines cannot therefore be readily applied to the announced obligations.

Conclusion and outlook: Greater responsibility, but still many unanswered questions

With the resolutions of 14 October 2026, the Federal Council is setting a new priority in Swiss platform regulation. A draft bill primarily focused on transparency and user rights is to become a law that also obliges very large online services to implement specific protective measures for minors.

Of particular significance are the planned ban on profiling-based advertising targeting minors and the obligation to assess and reduce risks specific to young people. At the same time, the extension of the reporting procedure to cover all allegedly unlawful content creates new opportunities for enforcement.

The specific details will reveal the extent to which providers will need to adapt their services and advertising systems. Age verification, the requirements for effective protective measures and the imposition of sanctions for breaches remain particularly relevant. The DETEC is due to draft the government message by the end of June 2027. There are currently no new implementation obligations under the KomPG. However, it is becoming apparent that affected providers will in future also have to take the protection of minors into account when designing their services and advertising.