France bans social media for under-15s, Senate votes 243-2

By Takeshi Mori · 2026-07-24

A near-unanimous parliament, a hard cutoff date

France's parliament definitively adopted the law prohibiting social media access for children under 15 on 21 July 2026. ^[1] The margin was about as decisive as legislative votes get: the Senate approved the final compromise text 243 votes to 2verifiedVerified Source: senat.fr, a signal that child safety on platforms has, for now, cut across party lines in Paris. ^[2]

The legislation makes France the first major EU country to enact a blanket restriction of this kind. It builds on a 2023 "majorité numérique" law that already required parental consent and technical age checks for 13- to 15-year-olds, but goes further by simply closing the door.

How the ban actually works

The access ban under Article 6-9 of the new law takes effect for new accounts on 1 September 2026.verifiedVerified Source: assemblee-nationale.fr ^[3] Accounts already in existence before that date are not immediately severed; a four-month transition period applies, putting the effective full ban somewhere around January 2027. ^[3]

The mechanism places the compliance burden squarely on platforms. Under the EU's Digital Services Act framework, large platforms already carry age-verification and notification obligations for minors, but the DSA leaves member states discretion to set their own age thresholds. France has now exercised that discretion firmly, alongside a pre-existing measure: French law 2018-698 of 3 August 2018 already bans mobile phone use by pupils in primary and secondary schools. ^[4]

Australia got there first, with a higher threshold

Australia enacted what it billed as a world-first social media age ban in late 2024. The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024 defines an "age-restricted user" as an Australian child under 16 years, a full year older than France's cutoff. ^[5] That law took effect on 10 December 2025, predating France's legislation by roughly seven months.

Both frameworks share the same structural logic: place the obligation on platforms to block access, rather than on parents or children to opt out. Where they differ is the age threshold and, increasingly, the enforcement posture.

The age-verification problem is real and unsolved

eSafety's first compliance report, released 31 March 2026, flagged major platforms' failures to block under-16s and announced a shift from monitoring to enforcement. ^[6] eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant was direct about what that means in practice.

"As a result of those concerns, I have announced today we are now moving from a compliance monitoring to an enforcement stance," Inman Grant said. "eSafety has a range of enforcement powers available, including civil penalties of up to $49.5 millionverifiedVerified Source: esafety.gov.au, but enforcement action demands sufficient evidence and that takes time to gather and hold up in a court of law." ^[6]

Inman Grant also acknowledged the broader difficulty. "After a decade of building trust and delivering impact, we are now on the cusp of significant changes on several fronts but crossing the line was never going to be easy," she said. ^[6] The underlying problem is technical: no reliable, privacy-preserving mechanism yet exists to verify user ages at scale across global platforms.

What France's law means for the rest of the EU

France's move puts pressure on other EU member states to clarify their own positions. The DSA creates a common baseline, but it does not mandate a specific minimum age for social media access across the bloc. Member states watching the French experiment will now have a live test case: whether platforms comply, how they verify ages, and whether the transition period produces a measurable effect on under-15 account numbers.

Platform obligations under the French law are not yet fully detailed in public implementing regulations, and the four-month transition window means the first real test of enforcement does not arrive until early 2027. France's Senate voted on 21 July 2026; the clock for platforms starts 1 September 2026.

Takeshi Mori

Takeshi Mori covers startups and technology for Bushletter. He is impatient with hype and interested in how products actually get built.