France is on track to make European legislative history this week, as lawmakers prepare to vote through a landmark bill that will ban all children under the age of 15 from accessing commercial social media platforms, marking one of the world’s strictest regulatory efforts to protect young people online.
After weeks of negotiations between the country’s upper Senate and lower National Assembly to reconcile differing regulatory approaches, a final agreement on the bill text was reached last week. French Digital Minister Anne Le Henanff confirmed the milestone in a post on X, noting that France would become the first European nation to implement a formal age-based digital restriction to shield minors from online harms. President Emmanuel Macron has positioned the legislation as a flagship domestic reform for his final term in office, and has committed to rolling out enforcement by the start of September 2025.
The ban will be rolled out in two staggered phases to give platforms time to adjust. From September 1 this year, social media services will be required to block all new account registrations from users confirmed to be under 15. Existing accounts held by under-15 users will be blocked starting in January 2027, giving platforms and families time to transition. Le Henanff has emphasized that the timeline is feasible because functional age-verification tools already exist, placing full regulatory responsibility for compliance on the platforms rather than children or parents. She also gave public assurances that strict safeguards will be put in place to protect users’ personal privacy data throughout the age-check process.
The legislation also includes a complementary provision that will ban personal mobile phone use in all French high schools, which will go into effect in September to align with the start of the new academic year.
Negotiations between the two legislative chambers focused on competing regulatory models. Senators initially proposed a two-tier system that would blacklist platforms confirmed to be harmful to child development, while allowing under-15s to access other platforms with parental consent. Ultimately, the National Assembly’s push for a blanket ban on under-15 access prevailed. The legislation still faces criticism from some left-wing politicians, who have raised concerns about flaws in the age-verification process, the speed of implementation, the risk that minors will find ways to circumvent the ban, and ongoing privacy risks.
Carve-outs are included for non-commercial public interest platforms, including online encyclopedias and educational sites. Crucially, the bill does not impose any fines or legal penalties on under-15 users or their parents for accessing social media, placing all accountability for compliance on platform operators. Lawmaker Laure Miller told AFP that major global social platforms are already largely prepared to implement the new rules.
Centrist Senator Catherine Morin-Desailly, who shepherded the bill through the upper chamber, explained that the original blacklisting proposal was abandoned because it would have required additional lengthy consultations with the European Commission to set criteria, and carried a small risk of violating existing EU digital regulations.
France’s move comes as policymakers across the European Union increasingly back tighter age restrictions for social media. France, Greece and Spain have already pushed for EU-wide rules limiting minor access to these platforms, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated last week that children should only receive phased, gradual access to social media services. The European Commission has also developed a centralized age-verification app, which France and other member states have already begun testing in recent months.
For Macron, the legislation comes as his last major planned domestic reform before he leaves office next year, after his government paused a controversial flagship pensions reform last year. If adopted, France will become the 21st country worldwide to propose or implement age-based restrictions on social media access for minors, and its policy will be closely watched by other European nations considering similar rules. Australia currently holds the title of the first country in the world to implement such a ban, requiring all major platforms to remove under-16 accounts or face heavy financial penalties starting in December 2024.
The push for the French ban follows a 2023 warning from France’s national public health watchdog, which concluded that major platforms including TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram cause measurable harm to adolescent development, with disproportionate negative impacts on girls’ mental health, even as the watchdog noted social media use is not the sole driver of declining youth mental wellbeing.