Social networks, protecting minors requires digital education (also) for adults

To return to being an educational community for minors and to involve all those affected by the use of digital devices and social networks - children, adolescents, parents, teachers, institutions - in a process of education on technology. It is in this spirit that, in December 2025, the Digital Pacts network was established as the Fondazione Patti Digitali Ets, an independent national entity that aims to coordinate the protection of minors online through bottom-up activation and transversal initiatives that must move gradually and involve the community. The movement, which counts more than 20,500 families and more than 240 local groups active in 16 Italian regions, organised yesterday, in the Refectory Hall of the Chamber of Deputies, the meeting, as topical as ever, considering the numerous international initiatives for thebanning of social media to minors, entitled "Digital education and protection: which alliances for a common action in Italia and Europe?". On 14 May, on the other hand, the first judicial action is expected against theItalian and European class action platforms to inhibit the addictive algorithms.

Eugenia Maria Roccella, Minister for Equal Opportunities and the Family, speaking at the opening of the conference, claimed what the Government has done so far in the protection of minors: from the Caivano decree of 2023 to the parental control to be applied on new digital devices to the age verification for access to adult sites (although the measure was suspended by the Regional Administrative Court because the platforms are based abroad, so the Italian ban cannot be applied) up to the ban on the use of the smartphones in the classroom. Family centres are also re-funded. If the government's objective is the creation of a safe and child-friendly digital ecosystem, it is, however, astonishing that a bipartisan proposal on the protection of minors online and the prohibition of their use under the age of 15 has been stalled in Parliament since October 2025, as the first signatory of the proposal, the PD deputy Marianna Madia, recalled.

Several studies are showing how there is a disconnect between the demands of adults and parents to regulate the use of social media (for 88% of the respondents to a Demetra survey) or to give their children smartphones at a certain age (now considered the gift of First Communion, even if one would like to give it later) and the actual implementation of these demands due to the social pressure to which parents themselves are subjected.

Stefano Vicari, director of child neuropsychiatry at the Bambino Gesù Children's Hospital, emphasised how the habitual use of smartphones among the very young not only takes time away from other activities, but also exposes children to unsuitable content - such as porn sites - and increases behavioural addictions. In order to limit the damage, such as increased anxiety, depression, aggression and self-harm often related to the use of social media (as reported by Jama Pediatrics), bans are not enough, Vicari recalls, but an educational campaign involving adults is needed, as also emphasised by Elena Bozzola, coordinator of the Italian Society of Paediatrics' Digital Addictions Commission. "Children under the age of two should never be given a smartphone; from the age of two to five, one hour a day with their parents; from five to ten, two hours. Graduality and sharing are fundamental at all ages,' Bozzola added. "We need a family plan, a digital education of the whole family, because too often it is the parents who never get off the phone".

The experiences recounted by the Digital Pacts activated in various cities in Italia - Milan, Rome's Municipality XII, Treviso and Bagnoli a Ripoli - all have one thing in common: networking between parents, schools, institutions, sports bodies, responding to a need expressed precisely by parents who find themselves unprepared in the face of the accelerated use of technology in their daily lives - it is estimated, in fact, that most adolescents spend 5/6 hours a day in front of a screen. The issue of protecting minors online cannot be tackled individually, only through bans, but must be implemented through acollective response that relies precisely on the community to avoid the paradox - sharply cited by the writer Alessandro D'Avenia - of adultising childhood and infantilising adulthood.