French lawmakers voted Tuesday to ban social media use for children under the age of 15, making it the first country in the European Union to introduce such an age limit.
Australia made history late last year when it implemented the first ban on social media for under-16s. The British government announced similar restrictions last month, expected to come into effect next year. Spain, Greece and Denmark are also planning to impose minimum age limits for social media use.
French lawmakers overwhelmingly voted in favor of the bill, which was strongly backed by France’s President Emmanuel Macron. He will now sign it into law.
“The brains of our children and our teenagers are not for sale,” Macron said in a video message in January. “The emotions of our children and our teenagers are not for sale or to be manipulated, neither by American platforms nor by Chinese algorithms.”
Macron had ordered the French government to expedite the bill’s passage through parliament, with the aim of having legislation in place for the beginning of the new next school year in September.
It is not yet clear how the social media sites will verify users’ ages. Australia requires companies to “take reasonable steps” to prevent underage children from opening or keeping accounts, and the French government has promised to implement age controls to back up the law.
The legislation also bans advertising promoting social media to children, including by influencers, and requires advertisements for social media platforms to carry the warning: “Dangerous products for children under 15.”
The new law will be enforced by Arcom, France’s audiovisual and digital communications regulator. It is expected to apply to all the major platforms.
According to Arcom, children aged 12 to 17 in France spend an average of 1 hour and 21 minutes a day on TikTok. The regulator says the platform’s recommendation algorithm tends to promote the most “extreme” content, exposing teenagers to a continuous stream of anxiety-inducing or otherwise harmful videos.
Social media companies say they already take steps to protect children from some kinds of content.
The proposal for a ban was welcomed by many French parents earlier this year.
“I think it’s great,” mother-of-six Geraldine Delacroix told CNN in March. “Now I’m waiting to see how it’s workable, but in any case, it’s better than nothing,” she added, noting that children could often get around existing parental controls. “Even if we block, they find ways to get around it,” she said.
In her work as a pediatrician, Delacroix has seen a growing distrust of smartphones and social media over the past decade among her patients’ families. “People are tense (about smartphones),” she said. “There’s been a real change of atmosphere.”
Her daughter Ariane said she saw little downside to the ban, but wished it had come in sooner, telling CNN it was “a bit too late for the young people of my generation who are 13 to 14.”
“We have a tendency to say, ‘OK, I’m just going to look at my phone for five or 10 minutes’ and then, as it’s super-addictive, we spend an hour, two hours on the phone,” she said.
Ariane, who is on all the major social networks, said that while they provided “fast, easy entertainment, without effort,” she saw almost no upside for children of her own age.
Her older sister, Gabrielle, who said she’d had access to Instagram and TikTok since before her 10th birthday – well before the age limit of 13 for most social networks – blamed Covid-19-era lockdowns for sowing bad habits of excessive smartphone use among her generation.
“Once you’re, like, used to it, you just keep on using it,” she said.
Gabrielle added that she had no doubt that children would find ways around the restrictions and suggested the platforms should instead do more to filter out dangerous content.
For the countries looking into age restrictions, ensuring effective age verification is a major challenge.
“Bans alone won’t be enough,” French Education Minister Édouard Geffray told lawmakers in January. “We can’t just restrict, we have to educate and propose different ways of socializing.”
Katia Roux, of Amnesty International France, sounded a similar note on Tuesday. “The debate over banning social media for those under 15 is legitimate,” she told CNN. “However, this measure is not enough to make digital platforms safe. Only a shift in the business model of social media companies will truly protect all users. To begin with, the platforms’ addictive and manipulative features must be banned.”
Across OECD countries in 2022, at least half of 15-year-olds in most countries spent 30 hours or more per week on digital devices, including learning activities in or out of school.
Last week, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said warned that “social media is not a toy,” in a statement calling for “age-appropriate restrictions.”
“In Europe, whoever develops a product is responsible for its safety. Car manufacturers must make their vehicles safe. We do not expect children to design their own seatbelts. We do not expect parents to fit airbags at home,” she wrote. “This is not about whether children can access social media. It is about whether and when social media can access our children.”
In France, some opposition lawmakers opposed the bill at an earlier stage over concerns about free speech and access to informative online content. Some senators had proposed a blacklist of certain social media platforms.
Teenager Nelya Ouali, whose mother does not permit her to have her own smartphone, said the law could impact her access to educational videos.
“We won’t be able to get more information as a result, because we don’t watch much television anymore,” she said, as she and her friends favor influencers’ videos. “But it’s still important for communication. Social networks are still important; they allow us to talk with our friends,” she said. “They allow us to be entertained, to take our minds off things.”
This is not the first time France has restricted access to online material. A ban on access to online pornography for minors overcame legal challenges to finally come into effect in 2025. It requires users to provide proof of age.
CNN’s Pierre Bairin, Elina Baudier Kim and Lisa Courbebaisse contributed reporting.
