A New Childhood: France’s Push to Keep Kids Off Social Media
On a gray morning in a Parisian lycée, the air smelled of rain and croissants, and the schoolyard hummed with the familiar soundtrack of adolescent life: laughter, the clack of trainers, the distant click of a scooter. But tucked into that ordinary scene is a debate that now has the full weight of state law behind it — a debate about screens, algorithms, and the shape of childhood itself.
France’s lower house of parliament has just voted through a bill to ban social media use for children under 15, a move President Emmanuel Macron hailed as “a major step” to protect the emotional lives of young people. The measure — now headed to the Senate — also reinforces a longstanding prohibition on mobile phones in middle schools and would extend restrictions in high schools. Lawmakers hope the new rules will take effect with the 2026 school year for new accounts, with platforms given until the end of that year to close out existing underage accounts.
What’s in the bill?
At its core, the legislation forbids minors under 15 from accessing commercial social networking services. It makes exemptions for online encyclopedias and educational platforms. Supporters say an effective age-verification system will need to be put in place — a technical hurdle not resolved at the national level, though work is underway across Europe.
- Ban access to commercial social platforms for under-15s.
- Ban mobile phones in certain schools (building on the 2018 ban for collèges — ages 11–15).
- Platforms would have a transition period to deactivate non-compliant accounts.
Former prime minister Gabriel Attal, speaking for the governing Renaissance party, framed the move as about more than screen time. “Social media platforms will no longer be able to colonize the minds of our children,” he said in the wake of the vote. “This is about autonomy, health, and civic resilience.”
Voices from the schoolyard
Walk into almost any classroom in France and you’ll find that the question of whether social media is toxic or merely unavoidable is no abstraction. “I’m relieved,” says Marie Dupont, a mother of two in Lyon who watches her 13-year-old scroll in the evenings. “There are nights when I write ‘no phone’ on a post-it and it still comes back to me — this feels like an extra hand.”
Not everyone shares Marie’s relief. “It’s unfair,” says Karim, a 16-year-old lycée student in Marseille who asked for only his first name. “Social media is how we organise group work, how we joke with friends. If you remove it for everyone until 15, you also remove a piece of our social life.”
Teachers, too, are divided. “Enforcement will be the real test,” says Isabelle Laurent, a history teacher in Bordeaux. “In one sense, the classroom has never been more precious — free from the constant pinging. But if the policy becomes a paper tiger, kids will be pushed to other places where there is no guidance.”
Why now? The data and the worry lines
The move in Paris follows a pattern in liberal democracies wrestling with the rapid spread of social media. Australia was the first country to set a national minimum age, requiring major platforms to block users under 16 — a law that forced platforms to block more than a million accounts and carry the threat of multimillion-dollar fines. France’s public health agency ANSES has warned of several detrimental effects of platforms like TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram on adolescents, particularly girls, citing increased exposure to cyberbullying, violent content, and pressures that can exacerbate body-image concerns.
Globally, the World Health Organization estimates that between 10% and 20% of adolescents experience mental health conditions, and social media is one factor among many that researchers point to when trying to explain recent trends. Yet causality is complex: screen time intersects with sleep disruption, socioeconomic stress, family dynamics, and pre-existing vulnerabilities.
Implementation: technical, legal, and ethical knots
Proponents admit the law will hinge on age verification — a notoriously thorny technical challenge that brings privacy questions front and center. How do you confirm a user’s age without creating massive databases of teen identity data? Should companies require ID checks, rely on AI, or accept parental attestations? Each option creates its own risks.
“Age-gating must not become a surveillance mechanism,” argues Céline Moreau, a digital rights lawyer. “If verification is done sloppily, you could end up collecting sensitive data about minors or forcing them into opaque verification flows that create new harms.”
Others are skeptical of the law’s paternalism. Arnaud Saint-Martin of La France Insoumise called the approach “an overly simplistic response” that treats children as passive consumers rather than as citizens to be educated. Nine child protection associations urged lawmakers to focus on holding platforms accountable instead of banning children outright.
Global ripples
France isn’t acting in isolation. Regulators worldwide are experimenting with age limits, content transparency, and heavy fines for noncompliance. Tech companies argue that nation-by-nation rules create a logistical nightmare, while parents and child advocates counter that the business models of many platforms actively monetize attention and not the well-being of young users.
“This law is part of a wider push to rebalance power between transnational tech firms and democratic states,” says Dr. Antoine Pelletier, a sociologist who studies youth and media. “It’s as much about digital sovereignty as it is about mental health.”
So what could change for families?
If the law becomes final, some everyday scenes may feel different. School corridors might be quieter. Family evenings might be less interrupted by glowing screens. But change will be uneven. Staff shortages, loopholes, and tech-savvy teens will all shape the lived reality.
Practical questions remain. Will parents have to verify their children’s ages with documents? How will children who depend on messaging for caregiving arrangements or for safety be accommodated? What about teenagers who use platforms to access support networks or to organise political engagement?
Where do we go from here?
The vote in the National Assembly is a vivid reminder that the digital lives of children are public policy, not just private choices. It forces us to ask uncomfortable questions: What kind of childhood do we want to defend? Who gets to decide the boundaries between protection and autonomy? And can societies design digital spaces that respect both safety and freedom?
As the bill moves to the Senate, the conversation will deepen — and not just in Parisian chambers. It will surface in kitchen tables, in teacher break rooms, in legal clinics and in the start-up corridors of tech firms. Whatever your view, the issue is personal: it touches how we raise children, how we teach responsibility, and how we treat the next generation as members of a digital public.
Are we ready to legislate childhood in the age of algorithms? That’s the question France is asking the world — and the answer may reshape more than playground rules. It may shape the very contours of growing up in the 21st century.
