TALLINN, Estonia — Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal has tasked a newly formed advisory group of ten experts with proposing concrete policy measures to address the negative impact of social media and video games on the mental health of young people, a decision that places child welfare at the center of the country’s digital policy debate. The announcement, reported by Euronews and carried by BGNES, comes amid growing alarm over rising anxiety, depression and cyberbullying among Estonian adolescents. The expert council is expected to deliver its recommendations to the government, parents and young people by next year, with a broad mandate to examine the many ways digital technologies affect children’s psychological well-being. Specifically, the group will investigate mental health risks linked to social media platforms and video games, study what constitutes problematic use of digital devices, and propose measures that could help create a safer online environment. In announcing the move, Michal did not mince words. “Anxiety and mental health problems among young people are a serious and growing issue,” he said. He also signaled that the government is interested in more than symbolic gestures or blanket restrictions. “Finding solutions that genuinely help young people is more important than simply imposing bans,” the prime minister stressed. That statement is significant for Estonia, a country with one of the most digitally advanced societies in Europe, where children are introduced to screens at an early age and where online services, digital classrooms and e-governance are woven into everyday life. The task now is to protect children from the harms of a digital environment without rejecting the benefits of technology itself.
The creation of the advisory council is not merely an academic exercise or a delay tactic. It hands specialists the responsibility of translating mounting public concern into concrete, actionable recommendations. While the exact composition of the ten-member body has not been fully detailed, such a panel in the Estonian context would typically include child psychiatrists, developmental psychologists, education researchers, digital media analysts, child-rights advocates and legal experts. Their work is expected to involve a combination of reviewing existing studies, commissioning new data analysis, and consulting with parents, teachers, school administrators, youth workers and the representatives of technology companies. The experts will also need to consider how existing laws and school policies can be adapted to meet challenges that have emerged faster than regulation could keep up. They will look at the way social media algorithms may push harmful content into the feeds of minors, the design features that make video games and short-form video so difficult to put down, and the role of parental oversight in homes where both parents may have limited understanding of the platforms their children use. The group’s recommendations will be aimed at three audiences: government institutions, parents and young people themselves. For policymakers, that could mean new legal rules for online platforms, tighter age-verification requirements, public health campaigns, or the introduction of digital literacy and emotional resilience curricula in schools. For parents, it could mean practical guidance on how to set boundaries around screen time, how to talk with children about disturbing content, and how to identify early warning signs that social media or gaming has become compulsive rather than recreational. For young people, it could mean better mental health support services, easier ways to report abuse or intrusive contact, and involvement in the design of policies that affect them. The deadline of “by next year” adds urgency, but the task is intellectually demanding. The council must avoid both moral panic and complacency, which means recommendations will need to be nuanced enough to protect the most vulnerable children without stigmatizing all young digital users.
The urgency behind this initiative is grounded in data. A 2025 study in Estonia found that students are increasingly exposed to disturbing online content, sexual messages, cyberbullying and excessive internet use. These are not rare or marginal experiences; they appear to be normal realities of teenage life in the digital age. Another Estonian study documented a worrying trend in so-called problematic social media use. The share of 11-to-15-year-olds displaying signs of such problematic use rose from 6 percent in 2018 to 8 percent in 2022, and among girls the figure reached 10 percent. Problematic use generally refers to a pattern of behavior in which a young person loses control over their social media consumption, experiences withdrawal symptoms when offline, neglects other responsibilities, and continues use despite negative consequences. These patterns are associated with measurable damage to well-being. The same study found that longer use of electronic media is linked to shorter sleep, lower life satisfaction, poorer school performance and more frequent depressive episodes. The mechanisms are not difficult to understand. Late-night use of social media or gaming platforms displaces sleep, and sleep deprivation is a known contributor to mood disorders among adolescents. Constant comparison with carefully curated online lives can fuel anxiety and low self-esteem. Algorithms designed to maximize engagement may push users toward extreme, sensational or age-inappropriate content. Cyberbullying can follow a child home from school and invade what used to be a private space. Perhaps most troubling is the fact that the most vulnerable children are often the most affected. A child who is already struggling socially may turn to social media or video games for relief and then become trapped in a cycle that deepens isolation, anxiety and academic decline. The Estonian data therefore points not to a single cause but to a complex ecosystem of risk involving platform design, developmental vulnerability and broader social pressures.
Estonia’s digital-first identity makes this policy shift particularly delicate. For decades, the country has celebrated its advances in e-governance, digital identity and online education. Estonian students have long been among the most intensive users of digital tools in schools; many have their own tablet or laptop for schoolwork from an early age. In the public imagination, being digitally fluent is an essential skill, not a luxury. That is why any effort to regulate social media or video games could easily be misunderstood as a step backward, or as a denial of the importance of technology. Yet the current initiative reflects a growing recognition that being digitally literate does not mean being exposed without protection to commercial platforms engineered for maximum attention. Children and teenagers are particularly susceptible to the effects of algorithmic feeds, infinite scrolling, push notifications and the social pressure to maintain an online presence. The pandemic deepened this dependency, as many Estonian children spent months learning and socializing almost exclusively through screens. The result is a generation that has grown up with the digital world not as a supplement to life but as the primary context for it. In that sense, the expert council is an attempt to reconcile two truths: that digital technology is an unavoidable and valuable part of modern childhood, and that it must be made safe. This approach aligns with a broader European conversation about child online safety. France has restricted smartphones in schools. Belgium and the Netherlands have introduced or considered stricter phone policies in classrooms. The European Union’s Digital Services Act imposes new duties on large online platforms to identify and mitigate systemic risks, including risks to minors. Several countries have introduced or debated age limits for social media use, and calls for mandatory age verification are growing louder. Estonia, by turning to a dedicated panel of experts, is signaling that it wants to base its response on evidence rather than rhetoric.
The timing is also important because private platforms are beginning to adjust their own behavior. Just last week, Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, announced new restrictions designed for young users. The new rules include limiting children’s access to these platforms around midnight and restricting daily use to two hours. These changes are an acknowledgment, at least implicitly, that social media companies have allowed products to be used in ways that are harmful to adolescents. What is less clear is whether such self-imposed restrictions are sufficient. Critics argue that voluntary measures are inconsistent across platforms, difficult to enforce, and based on broad limits rather than the quality or context of use. A child could spend their two hours watching reckless challenges, encountering strangers in comment sections or viewing content that fuels body image problems. The Estonian expert council will have to decide whether the state should set standards that platforms must meet, rather than relying on companies to police themselves. Possible measures include requiring platforms to disable algorithmic suggestions for accounts posting harmful content, to provide robust parental controls by default, to use age verification that is both reliable and privacy-respecting, and to submit to independent audits of their impact on minors. There are complicated legal and technical questions to be sorted out, but the direction seems increasingly clear: digital regulations for children are no longer a fringe issue but a mainstream area of public policy. The Estonian prime minister’s decision to establish an expert council suggests that the government wants to take a comprehensive, coordinated approach rather than reacting to the next scandal or the latest media panic. It also reflects the understanding that there is no single fix. A law that simply bans or restricts will not help if children continue to find their way around it, if parents lack the skills to support them, if schoolteachers are overwhelmed, or if mental health services do not have enough capacity to treat young people who are already struggling.
Whether the council’s recommendations will be enough to reverse the negative trends remains an open question. The pressures on today’s teenagers are enormous and not entirely digital in origin; school competition, family expectations, social changes and hereditary mental health risks all play a role. But the online world is where many of these pressures are amplified, and it is one of the few arenas where governments can act directly. The expert panel is expected to report by next year, and the political timing suggests that the results will feed into legislative or policy decisions shortly after. It is hard to imagine that the process will end with a single report. More likely, the council’s findings will lead to ongoing collaboration with schools and health authorities, and possibly a permanent mechanism for monitoring children’s digital well-being. The prime minister’s comment about avoiding simple bans should be taken seriously. Estonia has run on a pragmatic, technology-positive ethos for a long time, and it is unlikely to turn against the internet wholesale. The challenge ahead is to design a digital environment that respects the autonomy and freedom of young people while protecting them from the most dangerous effects of unrestricted social media and gaming. That means investing in mental health services, digital literacy education, parental support and platform accountability. It also means listening to the young people themselves, who are the ones living these experiences and who are often better positioned than adults to explain how different apps, settings and social dynamics affect them. The advisory council’s work could give Estonia an opportunity to become a model for other countries, blending its expertise in digital innovation with a genuine commitment to child welfare. The process will require patience, expertise and political courage, but the first step has been taken. For the Estonian teenagers behind the statistics, for the parents who worry about what their children are seeing at midnight, and for the teachers who see exhausted and anxious students every morning, the promise of a serious, evidence-based response is long overdue.
