On July 24, 2026, the European Commission sent TikTok preliminary findings that its accounts for minors fail to meet the safety standards required under the Digital Services Act (DSA). The Commission preliminarily considers that TikTok's default settings let minors expose their content to a global audience, including people without a TikTok account, and that its For You Feed recommends content from older minors (16 to 17 years old) to any TikTok user, in breach of the Guidelines on the protection of minors.
The finding is preliminary, not a final binding decision, but it signals how the Commission reads the DSA minor-protection guidelines and what default settings it expects from every designated Very Large Online Platform (VLOP). The full press release (IP/26/1679) sets out the Commission's position.
What does the Commission want TikTok to change?
TikTok currently lets minors choose to set their account as "public", so any user, including people without a TikTok account, can view their content. The Commission preliminarily considers that, in line with the DSA minor-protection guidelines, TikTok should adjust the default settings of minors' "public" accounts so that their content is, by default, visible only to TikTok users whom the minor has accepted.
Older minors may still have the option to share content with a broader audience on TikTok, but under no circumstances should that content be accessible to a global audience outside the platform. The Commission also considers that TikTok should refrain from recommending minors' content to other users through the For You Feed.
Who has to act, and by when?
The immediate addressee is TikTok, but the reading of the guidelines extends to every designated VLOP operating in the EU. DSA compliance and trust and safety leads at TikTok, Meta (Instagram), YouTube, Snapchat and X should review their minor-account default settings now: private-by-default visibility limited to accepted connections, no off-platform global access, and no algorithmic recommendation of minor content. National Digital Services Coordinators should expect parallel scrutiny of minor-protection settings on the platforms they supervise.
There is no separate compliance deadline in the preliminary findings. The obligation flows from the DSA as already in force, Regulation (EU) 2022/2065, applicable to VLOPs since August 25, 2023, and the published minor-protection guidelines. The preliminary findings tell platforms how the Commission interprets those existing duties; a final decision, if TikTok does not address the concerns, can lead to a fine of up to 6 percent of the platform's global annual turnover.
How does this fit the wider DSA enforcement wave?
The TikTok finding lands in a week of intense EU platform enforcement. On July 20, 2026, the Commission fined AliExpress EUR 550 million for DSA risk-assessment failures, and on July 23, 2026, it fined Google EUR 890 million under the Digital Markets Act for self-preferencing in Search and Play. The sequence confirms that minor protection, systemic-risk assessment and conduct obligations are all live enforcement fronts, not theoretical exposure.
For VLOP compliance teams, the TikTok finding narrows the ambiguity around the minor-protection guidelines: the Commission treats default public visibility and algorithmic recommendation of minor content as a breach, not a design choice. A documented settings audit, mapped to each guideline requirement, is now the baseline expectation.
| Setting | TikTok current (per findings) | Commission expected default |
|---|---|---|
| Minor account visibility | Minors can choose "public"; content viewable globally, including by non-users | By default, visible only to TikTok users the minor has accepted |
| Off-platform access | Content accessible to a global audience outside the platform | Under no circumstances accessible outside the platform |
| For You Feed | Older minors' (16 to 17) content recommended to any user | No recommendation of minors' content |
Continuous, per-jurisdiction real-time monitoring surfaces this kind of enforcement move the moment it publishes, so compliance teams can audit their own defaults before a finding reaches them.
Take advantage of this real-time watch
What should compliance teams do next?
Confirm whether your platform's minor-account defaults match the Commission's reading: private-by-default to accepted connections, no off-platform global access, and no For You Feed recommendation of minor content. Brief trust and safety, product and legal teams on the preliminary finding, and document the settings audit against the DSA minor-protection guidelines. Track the TikTok file through to a final decision, because the final text will set the concrete benchmark the Commission applies to every other VLOP. Obsidian tracks these developments per jurisdiction as they happen.
