Inside the big tech lobbying machine aiming to halt social media bans
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 41 minutes ago
- 5 min read
By VIVIENNE WALT
In November, Kim van Sparrentak, a Green Party lawmaker from the Netherlands, grabbed her headphones and headed for the exit of the European Parliament building. Moments earlier, she had participated in a heated debate over whether to bar young teenagers in Europe from social media platforms.
Then a statement on a podcast she was listening to stopped her cold.
It was a message from Meta opposing the social media ban proposal, van Sparrentak said in an interview. That she was hearing it on a favorite podcast threw her. “I thought there was something wrong with me,” she added.
Van Sparrentak, who has become a thorn in the side of U.S. tech giants, was in fact a prime target in the industry’s latest high-stakes lobbying efforts.
American tech companies, including Meta and Google, have tangled with regulators and lawmakers for years over data privacy, competition and artificial intelligence complaints. Now they face a new challenge: governments looking to block millions of teenagers from social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. They call the apps addictive and harmful, and some have tied excessive screen time to depression and suicide among adolescents.
Silicon Valley is fighting back. In the EU, the Americans have spent vast sums in the past year on splashy billboard ads, courting on-the-fence politicians and bulking up their ranks of lobbyists. Their playbook is being closely watched in areas around the world that are weighing similar crackdowns, from New Delhi to Nebraska.
Van Sparrentak has also been glued to a seminal trial in Los Angeles over whether Instagram and YouTube are effectively “digital casinos.” Lawyers for the plaintiff are echoing points raised in Europe: that these platforms are engineered to hook young users through features like infinite scrolling, likes and auto-recommendations. Mark Zuckerberg of Meta forcefully rejected the accusations on the stand this past week.
Since December, when Australia introduced the world’s first social media ban for teenagers under 16, several Asian nations have announced similar measures. France, Germany, Spain, Britain and Denmark have all said they plan to unveil their own versions of the policy within months.
The argument over how to pry youngsters from their smartphones isn’t limited to Europe. Eight U.S. states have introduced similar legislation.
How the tech industry has battled such measures in the EU could provide a blueprint for its battles elsewhere, including in the U.S.
High stakes
Tech giants calculate that new regulations in the EU’s 27 countries could ripple across their global operations — for now, and for generations to come. Success in persuading politicians to reject these bans, the thinking goes, could have a meaningful effect on their bottom line.
What these companies prefer are laws that require parents, not governments, to have the final say over children’s online habits. “They are going for the least bad option,” said Bram Vranken, a tech researcher for Corporate Europe Observatory, a watchdog group based in Brussels that monitors corporate lobbying.
Silicon Valley titans are lobbying aggressively for an alternative to bans. In closed-door conversations with European lawmakers, Meta has been highlighting its “teen accounts,” said an official for the company in Europe, who was granted anonymity to speak about private discussions. Such accounts were introduced in 2024 and give parents control over what users under 16 can see.
Some companies are also pushing for a “digital majority age” for social media, which would require explicit parental approval for teenagers under 15 or 16 to download social media apps.
The companies also argue that barring teenagers from their platforms could push them into darker, unregulated corners of the internet. They are also difficult to police, the companies contend.
That last point rankles Laure Miller, a member of France’s National Assembly who successfully led a social media ban for under-15s that passed with a large parliamentary majority in January. If lawmakers shied away from measures that were difficult to enforce, “we would not have a highway code,” Miller said.
‘Bombarding us’
Brussels is the focus of Silicon Valley’s lobbying efforts. While legislation is zipping through individual capitals like Paris, bills can easily bog down in the 720-member European Parliament.
Tech giants shelled out about 151 million euros (about $178 million) last year on lobbying EU lawmakers. The industry’s lobbying surged more than 55% from 2021 to 2025, according to a report by Corporate European Observatory and another organization, LobbyControl. Meta was the biggest spender, at about 10 million euros last year. Google spent about 4.5 million euros.
There are now 890 full-time tech lobbyists in Brussels, the report notes, more than there are members of the European Parliament. (Beyond campaigning against social media bans, the lobbyists are seeking to pause Europe’s AI Act and weaken data privacy rules.)
Tech companies are also courting far-right European parliamentarians, who often serve as swing votes. Meta alone held 38 meetings with these lawmakers between July 2024 and December 2025, according to Integrity Watch, a nonprofit focused on government transparency.
Last fall, a campaign sponsored by the Computer and Communications Industry Association, a trade group in Washington, plastered billboards in Brussels train stations, urging the EU to reject social media bans. The ads depicted European icons like Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press, and Guglielmo Marconi, the father of the radio — and claimed they would have been stifled under modern EU regulations.
And in late November, Meta took out a full-page ad in European newspapers. It featured a letter, signed by Antigone Davis, Meta’s global head of safety, arguing for a “digital majority age” across the bloc.
“They are just bombarding us,” van Sparrentak said.
The payoff
If tech giants can win over politicians like van Sparrentak, they stand a chance at heading off a more costly measure, the EU’s draft proposal called the Digital Fairness Act.
That bill would blacklist features like infinite scrolling, autoplaying videos and engagement-based recommendations. It would probably require complex redesigns of platforms and hobble their marketing machines.
The Digital Fairness Act is expected to go to a vote in Brussels late this year. “We’re working like crazy on it,” Isabelle Pérignon, the consumer policy director at the European Commission, the bloc’s executive body, told lawmakers last month.
Silicon Valley’s efforts appear to be paying off. The European Commission has agreed to hold consultations on whether to accept a digital majority age instead of an all-out ban.
Asked to grade the tech lobbying efforts in Brussels, Vranken said: “It seems pretty effective.”