France to Become First EU Country to Ban Social Media for Kids Under 15

France’s Parliament voted this week to ban children under 15 from using social media. This is the first blanket ban of its kind in the European Union, and both chambers passed the bill Tuesday. It’s a flagship policy from President Emmanuel Macron’s second term, and it doesn’t stop at social apps. The new law also bans cellphones in high schools.

The push follows years of pressure from parents and children’s advocates, including several French families who’ve sued TikTok over teen suicides they say are tied to harmful content on the platform. Per PBS, Gaëlle Berbonde, a parent from the Paris region, told the AP her daughter developed self-harm behaviors, anorexia, and depression after getting a smartphone in seventh grade. To make this worse, this was all in spite of parental controls. The girl spent a year and a half in the hospital. She’s 16 now, and thankfully, she is doing well.

Macron wants the ban live by the start of the school year in September. However, a constitutional review could push that timeline back.

[Related reading: Seattle schools sue TikTok, Meta, Snapchat, and YouTube over students’ mental health and behavioral issues]

However, not everyone’s on board. The left-wing party France Unbowed voted against the bill. They argued that it’s constitutionally unclear, tough to enforce, and would effectively kill online anonymity. Ines Legendre, a legal adviser for the online protection group e-Enfance, said that they’ll also “have to address the issue of existing accounts for those under 15,” so the new law won’t automatically transform into an outright ban. “How do we identify them? How do we suspend them? And then there’s the question of age verification for all new accounts that will come into effect,” she said.

The numbers explain the urgency. France’s health watchdog found that half of teenagers spend two to five hours a day on their phones, and 90% of 12-to-17-year-olds go online daily – 58% of them specifically for social media. The same report linked heavy use to lower self-esteem and more exposure to content around self-harm, drug use, and suicide. We’ve also repeatedly covered the influence of social media on both children’s and adults’ wellbeing.

[Related reading: Mark Zuckerberg hides his children’s faces on Instagram. Should you?]

The Rest of The World Isn’t Far Behind

France isn’t operating in a vacuum. Australia banned kids under 16 from social media back in 2024, with fines up to 50 million Australian dollars (about $35 million) for platforms that don’t comply. Not surprisingly, kids are reportedly beating the ban by simply lying about their age. That’s also the reason why we have so many kids under 13 on Instagram, which officially can only be used by those 13 and above.

[Related reading: This AI campaign warns you against sharing your kids’ photos online]

PBS writes that the momentum is building fast across Europe. Spain’s Pedro Sánchez floated a similar under-16 limit in February. Denmark and Greece are drafting their own bans, and the UK is weighing one, too.

[via PetaPixel]

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