French Senate examines law to ban social media for under-15s

French senators are examining a law that would ban social media for children under 15, in a vote scheduled for Tuesday 21 July. If passed, the ban would take effect at the start of the school year in September, making France one of the first countries in the European Union to set a digital age of majority.

Under the draft law, under-15s would no longer be able to create social media accounts from 1 September. Those who already have accounts would have four months to delete them, with the deadline set for 1 January. The text also proposes banning mobile phone use in lycées, the country's senior high schools. Only some left-wing parties have said they will abstain or vote against.

Child safety groups respond

Child protection organisations welcomed the signal the law would send, while warning that it would not on its own solve the problems young people face online. Inès Legendre, head of advocacy at the charity E-Enfance, which campaigns for healthier and safer digital navigation for young people, said social media were full of risks for younger children. On platforms including TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat, she said it had been shown that a child under 15 could very easily encounter cyberbullying, the risk of sexual blackmail, or inappropriate contact with adults.

She also pointed to algorithmic feeds, saying young people were exposed to content that could harm their physical as well as their mental health, and citing anorexia as an example: the more a child watched videos of that kind, the more such content would be proposed to them, deepening their distress. E-Enfance said a total ban on all social media before 15 was not necessarily the answer, since the platforms also let isolated young people build communities and offered spaces for creation and expression, and argued for a new model of navigation adapted to each age.

A symbolic law, says its rapporteur

Catherine Morin-Desailly, the senator acting as rapporteur for the text, described the law as above all symbolic. What should be voted, she said, was a minimalist device at the heart of a broader global strategy defining a pivot age, with precautions organised before and after it. She said the vote would make France a pioneer in the European Union on digital majority, and called it a spur to push the Union to regulate these matters quickly, since it falls to the European Commission to negotiate with the platforms, which should verify users' ages themselves.

The Australian experience

The Senate debate comes after Australia voted in December 2025 to ban social media for under-16s. Eight months later, a study of 400 young people by researchers found their digital habits had barely changed, with daily use among 12 and 13-year-olds remaining stable. Young people were circumventing the restrictions with accounts belonging to older people, fake accounts, or private browsers. Legendre said restrictions would always be circumvented, and that prevention work with young people was needed alongside any ban, adding that social media were often the entry point through which adults made contact with minors before moving the conversation to private messaging services.

Anyone affected by the issues in this article can contact Samaritans free on 116 123 or at samaritans.org.

Families who want to know more can read about the case against the platforms.