France has become the first country in the European Union to ban social media for children under 15(新しいウィンドウ).
Both chambers of parliament adopted the law(新しいウィンドウ) on Tuesday. It will now roll out in two stages. Starting in September 2026, under-15s won’t be able to open new accounts, and in January 2027 the rule will extend to existing accounts.
The social media ban in France follows Australia’s world-first under-16 ban and the UK’s planned ban, due in spring 2027. But France goes further in one way: to enforce the limit, everyone in France — not just teenagers — will have to prove their age to use platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat.
Everyone in France will have to prove their age
Even lawmakers who opposed the bill, from the left-wing France Unbowed party, warned the social media ban would end online anonymity and be impossible to enforce. The digital minister says personal data will be protected, but age verification at scale tells a different story.
To verify ages, platforms often turn to biometric face scans, government ID uploads, and behavioral analysis, each forcing companies to collect more personal data than before. Biometric data is especially sensitive: Unlike a password, you can’t change your face if it leaks. When Discord rolled out UK age checks in 2025, a breach exposed 70,000 government-ID photos.
France joins Australia and the UK, where a similar ban takes effect in spring 2027. The early evidence isn’t reassuring: Australia’s own regulator found 70% of under-16s still reach the platforms they’re barred from, using the same fake-age workarounds as before.
Safety shouldn’t cost your privacy
Parents are right to want guardrails, but the mechanism matters as much as the goal. Age verification normalizes the mass collection of biometric and identity data just to reach services that used to be open to everyone, and it shifts the burden of child safety onto data infrastructure that carries its own risks.
It may not even work: Barring under-15s doesn’t touch the manipulative design and engagement-at-all-costs algorithms that make these platforms harmful in the first place. It protects platforms, not children.
It’s worth remembering why this ban exists in the first place: Megacorporations like Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) and ByteDance (TikTok) built their business models on maximizing engagement, and have faced years of scrutiny over teen mental health harms and data practices.
A private European social media alternative built without Big Tech’s playbook could be part of a lasting fix to make the internet less harmful for everyone, rather than make identity the price of entry. For families navigating this problem now, our guide to keeping kids safe online is a place to start.
