French lawmakers have approved a national ban on social media access for children under 15, a policy that will make age checks the price of entry for everyone trying to use major platforms in France.
Both chambers of Parliament voted Tuesday for the measure, making France the first European country to enact such a ban, according to The Record. The law is scheduled to take effect on September 1. From that date, people under 15 will be barred from opening new social media accounts. Enforcement against accounts that already exist is set to begin in January 2027.
The mechanism is blunt: platforms will have to determine whether a user is old enough before allowing access. Reuters reported that social media companies must get their age-verification systems approved by France’s privacy regulator. That means adults will also have to prove their age, which is where the child-safety pitch runs straight into the privacy wall.
Privacy advocates have criticized the law because age verification at scale can require data collection from users who are not suspected of being underage. The French law does not just restrict children. It changes the login gate for the whole user base, because a platform cannot reliably exclude under-15s without checking the rest.
The same legislation also bans mobile phones in high schools. France already prohibits the devices in elementary and middle schools.
President Emmanuel Macron has pushed the policy for years and claimed the vote as a delivered campaign commitment. “I had committed to it, and now it’s been voted on: social media will be banned for those under 15 starting back-to-school,” Macron wrote on X.
France joins a growing age-ban push
France is not acting in a vacuum. Australia, Turkey and Indonesia have already introduced social media bans for children, according to The Record. European governments have been moving in the same direction, though most proposals remain pending.
Leaders in Greece and Spain have pledged bans that have not yet taken effect. In the United Kingdom, the government under Prime Minister Keir Starmer had been pushing a ban on social media access for children under 16, but The Record reported that it is unclear how Starmer’s successor, Andy Burnham, will treat the proposal.
The European Commission is also considering a bloc-wide minimum age of 13 for social media use. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on July 12 that Europe needs a common starting age, arguing that allowing large technology companies unrestricted access to children would expose another generation to “more mental harm, addiction and misery.”
Enforcement remains the weak point. Researchers studying Australia’s ban, which began in December, are finding that large shares of teenagers are still using social media there, according to The Record. Age gates are policy. Teenagers with phones, friends and workarounds are implementation.
Critics want platform rules, not broad bans
Amnesty International said governments should focus less on excluding children from platforms and more on changing the design choices that make those platforms harmful. Agnès Callamard, the group’s secretary general, said in a statement that authorities should force companies to stop putting profit ahead of human rights.
Callamard said governments should first ban features that drive harm, including engagement-based recommendation systems that can pull children toward depressive and suicidal content.
That critique does not defend the status quo. It points at a different target: the ranking systems, incentives and product decisions made by platform operators. France’s Parliament has chosen the age gate first. The next test is whether the platforms can enforce it without turning age verification into another data grab.
This story draws on original reporting from The Record.
