Greece announces plans to decrease young people's internet use

Greece plans to enhance parental oversight of mobile devices in 2025 through a government-operated app set to launch in March.

Dimitris Papastergiou, the minister of digital governance, said this week the Kids Wallet app was aimed at safeguarding children under the age of 15 from the risks of excessive and inappropriate internet use.

The app will be run by a widely used government services platform and operate in conjunction with an existing smartphone app for adults to carry digital identification documents.

“It’s a big change,” Papastergiou told reporters, adding that the app would integrate advanced algorithms to monitor usage and apply strict authentication processes.

“The Kids Wallet application will do two main things: It will make parental control much easier, and it will be our official national tool for verifying the age of users,” he said.

Papastergiou said the government was hoping to have the children’s app pre-installed on smartphones sold in Greece by the end of 2025.

The app is part of an overall strategy announced on Monday to protect minors from internet addiction.

The national plan also includes a dedicated website for parents to look into existing control features they can use to keep children safe online.

More direct government involvement

While facing criticism from some digital rights and religious groups, government-controlled apps and online services – many introduced during the pandemic – are generally popular in Greece, as they are seen as a way of bypassing historically slow bureaucratic procedures.

The planned online child protection measures would go further than regulations already in place in several European countries by introducing more direct government involvement.

“What’s the elephant in the room? Clearly, it’s how we define and verify a person’s age,” Papastergiou said.

"When you have an (online) age check, you might have a 14-year-old claiming they are 18. Or you could have someone who actually is a genuine 20-year-old … Now we can address that".