After months of debates across the continent, France became the first European Union member to ban social media for young teenagers this week, kicking off what’s set to be a wave of new regulations and pressuring the bloc to find a unified approach toward the big tech platforms.
France passed legislation banning social media for children under 15 in a vote on Tuesday, beating the European Commission’s planned rules which are set to be announced after the summer. A swath of other countries including Greece, Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Austria, Slovenia, Ireland and the Netherlands have expressed interest in similar measures.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is planning an EU-wide social media delay for children that could unite the individual states’ approaches. A patchwork of laws could be difficult to enforce and weaken the EU’s single-market status as it fights to rein in big US tech companies and wrestles with pushback on its digital rules. President Donald Trump has vehemently opposed rules that he says threaten Americans’ free speech or disproportionately targets US companies.
The French law will bar children from creating new accounts starting in September, when the school year resumes, and a full ban comes into effect in January for existing profiles.
“France is leading the way in Europe when it comes to protecting our children and teenagers,” President Emmanuel Macron said in a video montage showing social media’s potential to promote content around suicide, self-harm and anorexia. Meta Platforms Inc.’s Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook, Snap Inc., Elon Musk’s X, Google’s YouTube as well as China’s TikTok will likely be most affected.
Representatives for Meta, TikTok, Google and X didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Snap declined to comment.
Other countries could follow soon. Greece is fast-tracking its own restriction by inserting the measure into an unrelated bill, with a goal to have it enforced by January 2027, news website Euractiv said in a report. The UK, which left the EU a decade ago, announced its own ban cutting off children under the age of 16 from social media. It has also proposed a curfew that will stop access to the apps between midnight and 6 a.m. for 16- and 17-year olds.
Von der Leyen has said the EU proposal will call for children under the age of 13 to be allowed to access social media only in the presence of an adult, while access for older children will be limited based on how safe social media companies make their platforms. Many of the social networks have their own age limits and market accounts that they say are safer for teens, with features like content restrictions or limits on who can contact the user.
The French case shows that setting up a ban is complex. The country’s initial proposal aimed to give the national regulator the power to establish a black list of apps. That was labeled by the EU Commission as being in conflict with the Digital Services Act, which makes it the sole regulator of large online platforms. The final version of the French legislation, which still has to be approved by the Constitutional Council, dropped that section. France is also letting social media services chose their own age-verification method.
There’s also the problem of keeping kids from finding workarounds. Reports from Australia, which was the first country to pass this legislation in December, were mixed with many children finding ways to circumvent the restrictions.
This report is auto generated from the Bloomberg news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.