France Becomes 1st EU Country to Bar Children Under 15 From Social Media

Deputies applaud the adoption of the bill on the right to assistance in dying following the vote at the National Assembly, France’s lower house parliament, in Paris on May 27, 2025. Stephane de Sakutin/AFP via Getty ImagesPARIS—The French Parliament gave final approval on July 21 to a bill barring children under 15 from social media, making France the first European Union member state to impose an outright age limit.The Senate adopted the compromise text 243 to 2, and the National Assembly followed hours later, 279 to 81.The ban covers new accounts from Sept. 1, while platforms have until Jan. 1, 2027, to close accounts already held by under-15s.The law also extends the school cellphone ban to high schools and exempts online encyclopedias, educational repositories, and open-source development platforms. It carries no penalty for children or parents.The measure is a signature reform of President Emmanuel Macron’s final term, who ordered the bill to be fast-tracked to take effect from the new school year.Users Must Prove Their AgeThe law does not prescribe how platforms must check ages. Digital Affairs Minister Anne Le Hénanff said all French users would have to prove their age during the four-month transition, while insisting that privacy is protected: no identifying data would be stored or shared with platforms.Opponents remain unconvinced.“We support the goal of banning access to social networks for minors under the age of 15. While your bill addresses the ‘why,’ it unfortunately does not, in its current form, answer the question of ‘how,’ and at this stage represents a potential infringement on the civil liberties to which we are deeply committed,” National Rally MP Laure Lavalette told the National Assembly.Most National Rally lawmakers abstained rather than voting against the legislation.Louis Boyard, of the hard-left France Unbowed party, told the Assembly that the text’s real purpose was to force the entire French population, whatever their age, to verify their identity before logging on. Bill author Laure Miller rejected the charge.The law will be referred to the Constitutional Council, which has one month to rule on it.The Council of State, France’s highest administrative court, cautioned during its review that the text must preserve the “freedom of expression” of the young.Senators dropped an earlier blacklist mechanism over fears it breached EU law. Catherine Morin-Desailly, who steered the bill through the upper house, conceded that constitutional censure was a risk.Doubts Over EnforcementAustralia, which barred under-16s from social media in December 2025, offers the only precedent.A survey of 1,050 Australians aged 12 to 15 conducted in March by the UK-based suicide prevention organization the Molly Rose Foundation found more than 60 percent of those who held accounts before the ban still reached at least one platform, using borrowed logins, false birthdates, and workarounds to facial scans.Brussels is moving in the same direction.The European Commission unveiled an age-verification app in April, and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said minors should have “phased and gradual access” to social media.