A law meant to protect kids under 15 ended up stuck on a technical snag: how do you prove someone's age without forcing everyone to hand over ID?
France's top constitutional authority, the Conseil constitutionnel, recently struck down a bill passed just last month that would have made France the first country in Europe to explicitly ban children under 15 from using social media. The Council's objection wasn't to the ban itself, but to the fact that the law never spelled out how age verification would actually work. The ruling was blunt: banning under-15s from specific online services effectively requires "everyone, including adults," to prove their age before use—but since the bill set no conditions or limits on that verification process, it failed to provide adequate legal safeguards.
This isn't a case of "age verification hits a snag, so the whole law is dead." French President Macron has already instructed Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu to redraft the bill in line with the Constitutional Council's opinion. In a social media post on July 21, Macron said, essentially: what he promised has already passed a vote—no social media for under-15s starting from the new school year—thanked lawmakers, and noted that it was now up to the Constitutional Council's ruling, with the goal of eventually making the measure a reality to protect children. In other words, the bill is on hold for now, but the president's position hasn't shifted.
Zooming out, France is neither the first nor the last country grappling with this issue. Australia has already implemented a ban on under-16s using platforms like Facebook, TikTok, Twitch, and YouTube, but that law is facing legal challenges from social media companies, and research suggests kids are still finding ways to log in anyway. Denmark's similar legislation is reportedly close to passing, and the UK is evaluating its own version. In North America, Canadian regulators have proposed a bill banning social media use for under-16s, while several U.S. states have introduced regulations restricting minors' social media use—though most of these rely on requiring parental consent rather than outright bans.
France's setback here really points to a challenge common to all this kind of legislation: how do you block minors without building a nationwide age verification system for everyone? There's no standard answer yet, and what France's next draft will look like remains to be seen.
