New online child safety rules must not overload parents

On 14 October 2026, the German Federal Cabinet adopted key points on protecting children and young people in the media. Munich-based child protection start-up Helmit welcomes them as an important step, but cautions that what matters now is that the new rules actually take pressure off parents in everyday family life.

To take pressure off parents, the key points rely mainly on stricter obligations for platforms and reliable age verification. Both are the right approach. At the same time, an age-based tiered model can create considerable work for parents if putting the rules into practice becomes too complicated.

Take a family with a 13-year-old and a 15-year-old: in future, they may have to manage separate rules for each child on each platform. Parents will have to approve contacts, set time limits and adjust settings, with different requirements depending on each child’s age.
If the administrative burden becomes too much for parents, important safety settings may never get switched on.

Independent tools that help parents protect their children online do not yet feature in the German government’s key points. The draft EU Kids Act goes further here: it requires very large online platforms (VLOPs) to open up to providers of child protection services, so that different services can be managed in one place.

Helmit suggests including this point in the German government’s next steps and pushing in Brussels for this so-called interoperability requirement to apply to all platforms, regardless of their size.

In addition, the planned national restrictions for 13- to 18-year-olds should closely follow the European model. This would spare families from having to deal with two sets of rules side by side.

Alexander Wolters, founder of Helmit: “The key points rightly hold platforms accountable and aim to take pressure off parents. For this to make a real difference day to day, parents need tools that work across all online services. We’re in close contact with parents, and we know how complex ‘digital care work’ is. That’s why our goal is to make digital child protection as simple and safe as possible for families. We’re happy to contribute our practical experience to the next steps.”

Helmit is a child protection platform for messaging apps and social media. It detects cyberbullying, cybergrooming and harmful content of all kinds in real time and alerts parents before harm is done, without giving parents open access to private messages. Helmit runs on the device itself, covers WhatsApp, Instagram, Discord, Signal and YouTube, and is available for iOS, Android, Mac and Windows. Founded in Munich in 2025 by Leonardo Benini and Alexander Wolters. SOC 2 certified. GDPR compliant. www.helmit.org