🔶 Ban on social media for people under 15 in France

France is the first EU member country to ban the use of social media for children and teenagers under the age of 15. The country’s parliament approved the related law with a decisive majority.

The law is set to take effect after the end of the summer holidays this year. Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, was one of the main supporters of the initiative.

After the law was passed in parliament, Macron said: “I worked to achieve this goal, and now it has been adopted: from the beginning of the new school year, the use of social media for children under 15 will be banned.”

In April, Macron had asked teenagers to turn off their mobile phones and read books so, as he said, citizens would become better. At the time, Macron said: “We have left you alone in this forest, and this forest has taken your attention and focus away from you.” He added that the pace of this should be slowed and that teenagers should be helped to become “mature adults.”

Under this law, teenagers under 15 will no longer be allowed to create new user accounts on social media starting September 1. After that, platforms will have four months to delete existing accounts of children and teenagers. These platforms will also be required to use an age-verification system that has been approved by France’s Data Protection Authority.

For a long time, France’s parliament has debated this ban and how it would be implemented, and the European Commission had also criticized Paris’s plans. However, the amended text of the law was approved by both the National Assembly and the Senate shortly before the start of the parliament’s summer recess. Even so, it still remains to be determined how this ban will be enforced and applied in practice.