The French National Assembly has passed a landmark bill imposing a near-total ban on social media access for users under the age of 15, following Australia’s recent decision to force Meta to delete more than 4.5 million accounts belonging to under-16s.
The legislation, tabled on Monday and approved by a vote of 116 to 23, will now proceed to the Senate for further debate and approval.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who has strongly championed the measure, hailed the vote as a decisive step to protect children and teenagers from excessive screen time and harmful online content.
In a post on X, Macron declared, “Our children’s brains are not for sale. Not to American platforms, nor to Chinese networks.”
The bill prohibits those under 15 from accessing all “social networking sites” embedded within broader platforms, while explicitly excluding online encyclopaedias and educational platforms. Every social media company operating in France will be required to implement robust, effective age-verification mechanisms to block access by young children.
The legislation also extends the existing ban on smartphone use by junior high school pupils inside school premises, with enforcement for new accounts targeted from the start of the 2026 school year.
If passed by the Senate and signed into law, France would become the second country in the world—after Australia—to impose a nationwide ban on social media use by underage teenagers.
France’s public health watchdog ANSES warned earlier this month that platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram pose several detrimental effects on adolescents, especially girls, including increased risks of cyberbullying, exposure to violent content, body-image issues, and sleep disruption.
A Harris Interactive survey conducted in 2024 found that 73 per cent of the French public supported a ban on social media access for under-15s.
Centrist lawmaker Laure, who presented the bill in the chamber, stated, “With this law, we are setting a clear boundary in society and saying social media is not harmless. Our children are reading less, sleeping less, and comparing themselves to one another more. This is a battle for free minds.”
