That’s it: the law banning social media before the age of 15 has been passed by Parliament. All the political parties represented in the Assembly voted for it, with the exception of LFI and two Green MPs. And with that, parents are deprived of part of their educational prerogatives. A traditional characteristic of dictatorships.
To convince us, we were told that Greece and Denmark had done it. That is false. In these two countries, the law does provide for a ban on social media for minors under 15, but unless parents decide otherwise, they can unlock certain features and set usage times for their child.
This is, moreover, the same recommendation that the Council of State made in its opinion no. 410309 (session of 8 January 2026)1. After recalling that access to social media is part of freedom of expression and communication (art. 11 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen), it points out that a “general and absolute” ban would be constitutionally risky. It therefore suggests replacing the uniform ban with a two-tier system: an absolute ban for platforms (for example TikTok) whose recommendation algorithms would be judged dangerous by decree, after an opinion from ARCOM; and, for other services, access banned by default, but possible with the express authorisation of the parents. The latter could also set a maximum daily connection time.
Finally, this was also the spirit of the law on digital majority before 15 passed in 2023 and rejected by Europe because it was badly drafted, just like Ms Miller’s bill, which also had to be amended to comply with European legislation. But the 2023 law never found anyone to bring it into compliance. At the time, Macron took no interest in it. It started from the principle that children’s personal data belong to their parents until the age of 15, and that parents must give their authorisation for all their offspring’s activities on the Internet. In practice, this meant that all applications would be blocked by default when a smartphone was bought for a minor under 15. Only the parents would be able to unlock them with a code, and to decide both which features they give access to and for how long.
Is the absolute, blanket ban before 15 proposed by the government then the right solution? First of all, let us remember that other options are on the table at European level, notably interventions on the design and limits of algorithms, and the possibility of requiring the GAFAM to unbundle and allow configuration. Indeed, the problematic functioning of platforms affects all age groups. Should we then do nothing and wait for such measures eventually to be imposed on the GAFAM by the European Commission? No, because these negotiations are long. But nothing justifies a law of total and absolute prohibition based on age. The ideal would be a ban on smartphones for under-13s (which, incidentally, matches the “3-6-9-12 milestones” that I launched in 2008, which recommend allowing free access to the Internet only after the age of 12), and social media banned until 15, with parents having the right to change this access between 13 and 15 if they see fit.
Indeed, nothing is simple, as an editorial2 in the scientific journal “The Lancet” reminds us, devoted to self-harm but of more general scope: “It is difficult to establish a formal link between the rising rates of mental disorders and the growing use of social and digital media in adolescence, or to demonstrate clear brain changes. (…) Although rates of mental disorders have risen in parallel with the use of social media, many other environmental changes affecting young people have occurred over the past 15 years, such as growing inequality, a shrinking labour market and concerns about climate change. If there is a significant causal link between social media and mental disorders, it is probably weak, although it may also be important.”
Since nothing is uniform, neither the networks, nor the children, nor family environments, nor the alternatives to screens, it is important to let parents choose according to their own values and their children’s possibilities.
But this law also contains two blind spots. The first concerns digital education. It is to be feared that children kept away from social media until 15 will discover them in an equally problematic way. The solution is obviously to provide education about their uses and dangers. Unfortunately, the Ministry of National Education remains silent on this question.
The second blind spot concerns the absence of any measure on alternatives to screens. Teenagers are looking for contacts with whom they can consider breaking away from their parents’ family network without ending up alone: that is the importance of “mates” at this age. So where and how will these young people, suddenly deprived of social media, meet and talk? Opening school playgrounds and gyms on Saturdays and Sundays, possibly under the responsibility of family associations, would be the minimum to enable young people who want to play together, or simply get together to talk, to do so. Providing spaces for free play is all the more important because children from well-off backgrounds can benefit from a large number of paid activities. For the others, it is to be feared that they will make heavy use of free VPNs to get round the ban, with the risk of finding themselves alone with their digital experiences. Many also risk withdrawing into AI-generated digital companions, capable of creating the illusion of being a real person and sustaining endless exchanges, even more desocialising and addictive than some functions of social media. In the United States, teenagers’ intensive use of chatbots as therapeutic companions is already being flagged as a public health problem.
There remains the problem of age verification. Many international organisations are warning that the technical procedures put in place to verify the age of social media users could quickly turn into an instrument for controlling all citizens, at the risk of making them lose fundamental rights.
All that remains is to hope that this law will quickly be accompanied by a scientific programme to study its effectiveness, not only for young people under 15, but also on how they develop beyond that age.
- https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/dyn/contenu/visualisation/1099890/file/410309%20-%20Extrait%20Avis%20-%20PPL%20-%20anonyme.pdf ↩︎
- Moran, Paul et al., The Lancet, Volume 404, Issue 10461, 1445 – 1492 October 12, 2024. ↩︎
