France is preparing to ban children from using social media. If the Senate approves legislation already passed by the National Assembly, the ban will come into effect by the start of the next school year in September. But the technicalities of proving someone’s age have raised privacy concerns, and critics question whether a ban alone will make children any safer.
The bill would ban under-15s from using social media and restrict mobile phone use in schools, in light of research showing the negative impact of social media on young people.
It is being championed by President Emmanuel Macron, and the National Assembly adopted it by a comfortable margin of 130 votes to 21.
France’s public health watchdog Anses has reported on social media's harmful effects on the mental health of teenagers, which include lower self-esteem and sleep disruption, often linked to cyberbullying or exposure to violent or inappropriate content.
“I compare myself to the girls I see on TikTok. They're really pretty, so I feel bad about myself, and I think that happens to a lot of other girls my age,” says Theodora, a 16-year-old in Paris. "I’m not as confident as I used to be.”
Several families of children who took their own lives have taken legal action against the Chinese video-sharing platform TikTok in France, alleging that its algorithm pushed suicide-related content that contributed to their children’s deaths.
For lawmakers, banning children from these platforms appears to be the most straightforward way to protect them.
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More on children and social media in the Spotlight on France podcast:
Age verification
Australia introduced a ban on social media for under-16s in December, and France’s proposal similarly puts the onus on platforms such as TikTok or Instagram to verify that users are the right age.
Since 2023, France has required parental consent for children to access social media, but enforcing a full ban introduces technical challenges and concerns about privacy.
“Sending an identity document is terrible in terms of privacy,“ warns Olivier Blazy, a professor in cybersecurity at the École Polytechnique university outside Paris.
Platforms already use facial age estimation tools – TikTok checks if someone is over 18 to access its live-streaming feature – but the technology is not able to make precise judgements.
“If you are 30, they won't think you are minor, and if you are eight, you won't seem like an adult,” Blazy explains. “But if you are close to the threshold, or if you are not a white male, then you do not fit the model the system was trained on and the estimation is not reliable.”
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Even if the software improves, he says it will never be accurate enough to enforce a specific age cut-off.
“There's no physical difference between someone who is 14 years and 300 days old, and 15 years and one day old,” he says, adding that no system is foolproof.
“Whatever solution you pick is going to be circumvented, so you should pick a solution that does not intrude on privacy."
He worries that lawmakers are not taking this into account. “I’m concerned that the goal is to keep kids from accessing these platforms, and that privacy will be sacrificed for this.”
False sense of security
Anses reports that half of French teenagers spend between two and five hours a day on a smartphone
A study by Generation Numerique found that 62 percent of boys in France and 68 percent of girls aged 11 to 18 use social media, including 58 percent of 11 and 12-year-olds.
Blazy also questions whether a ban alone addresses the problem, if platforms themselves are not held accountable for the harmful content seen by children.
“There's a failure – by adults, the community, the government, and the platforms themselves – to moderate bad content on social media,” Blazy says, adding that simply banning children could give a false sense of security.
Psychiatrist Serge Tisseron worries that a ban is France’s way of addressing a gap in European regulation.
The European Union, he says, has drafted legislation to regulate platforms, but hesitates to enforce it for fear of retaliation from the United States, where many of the platforms are based.
“So the temptation is to address the other side of the chain – the users – and ban social media before the age of 15,” he told RFI.
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Real-world alternatives
Tisseron warns there needs to be an alternative to social media, one which addresses the needs of young people who lack opportunities to meet each other in person.
“Where will they meet if they can’t meet on social media?” he asks. “We need to think about the need for meeting each other and the sociability of teenagers. They need to meet somewhere.”
He would like to see physical alternatives provided, such as school playgrounds and sports facilities that are open after school and at the weekend. So far, he notes, the sports and health ministries have remained silent on this issue.
He also stressed the importance of education when it comes to using social media safely, saying that delaying access until the age of 15 does not guarantee healthy use later.
“If we do not educate children about digital risks, then the day after they turn 15 and get access to these platforms, nothing will stop them from running into problems,” he says. “Just because you only discover social media at 15, doesn't mean you will use it wisely.”
Listen to an interview with Olivier Blazy on the social media ban for children in the Spotlight on France podcast, episode 140.
