France approves under-15 social media ban ahead of September
France has finalized a sweeping ban on social media access for children under 15, pressuring major tech platforms to build unproven age-verification systems and setting a benchmark for wider European regulation.
French lawmakers gave final parliamentary approval on Tuesday to a bill banning children under 15 from social media, moving the measure into law ahead of the summer recess. The National Assembly adopted a compromise text that resolves months of deadlock between the lower house and the Senate. Gabriel Attal, who leads the Ensemble group, called the vote "an immense victory."
The legislation imposes a blanket ban on platforms including Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube, dropping a Senate-backed proposal for a narrower blacklist of harmful services. Exemptions are carved out for online encyclopedias, educational directories, and open-source software platforms, with the government's digital minister drawing up the final list. New accounts will be barred from 1 September, with existing accounts given roughly four months to close, while the measure also extends an existing smartphone prohibition in schools to cover high schools.
For the targeted tech companies, the law demands the rapid deployment of age-verification systems vetted by France’s privacy regulator. The legislation does not spell out how these checks should work, leaving platforms to solve a technical puzzle that has derailed similar efforts elsewhere. Investors should note that losing the under-15 demographic restricts the long-term pipeline of young users these firms rely on for growth.
France is not acting in isolation, which amplifies the regulatory risk for the sector. Australia implemented an under-16 ban in December, though its early trials showed how easily age checks can be circumvented. In Europe, momentum is building for stricter controls, with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen backing bloc-wide limits and the EU developing its own verification app. A patchwork of national age bans would force platforms to build fragmented, costly compliance systems across the continent.
The immediate future involves legal and logistical hurdles rather than parliamentary debate. Left-wing groups have signalled they may ask the Constitutional Council to review the ban’s proportionality, and a mandatory EU notification period runs until 10 August. President Emmanuel Macron, who stated that children’s brains were "not for sale, neither to American platforms nor to Chinese networks," must still overcome the fundamental flaw that has plagued every comparable law: reliably telling a 14-year-old from a 15-year-old without violating the privacy of everyone else.
